The Shrink Network runs 14 properties. Any one of them could damage the trust of all 14 by launching something poorly. This page is the ruleset that prevents that. Every network property agrees to these standards before launching anything in the categories below.
If a network site publishes something that violates these rules, tell us. Corrections and revocations are public. See Corrections.
Recognition programs.
Any list, award, "top N," "best of," "featured" series, or annual recognition on any network site must comply with the following before launch. This is the piece the whole health-content industry gets wrong, and it's the piece that separates legitimate editorial recognition from pay-to-play marketing.
Never launch as "Top Psychiatrists," "Best Doctors," "Most Trusted Clinicians," "Five-Star Practices," or any clinical-quality superlative unless the site holds a defensible methodology. Those labels are difficult to substantiate, invite legal exposure, and damage credibility across the network.
Required before launch. Publish:
- Purpose of the recognition
- Eligibility criteria
- Selection process and methodology
- Judges or editors, with credentials
- Conflict-of-interest policy
- Recusal rules
- Nomination rules (open, invited, or editorial)
- Whether self-nomination is permitted
- Sponsorship disclosure (if any commercial support exists)
- Timeline and cadence
- Correction and revocation policy
- Explicit statement that payment is not required
- Explicit statement that advertising or referral relationships do not influence selection
What each honoree receives. An individual profile page, documented reason for inclusion, cited sources, share card, optional badge with accurate language ("Featured in [site]" or "Included in [program]," not "Best of" or "Certified by"), direct canonical URL.
Governance separation. The people who select honorees cannot also sell advertising to potential nominees. The site's editorial function is walled from any commercial function.
Safer first launches. Recognition of documented programs and initiatives ("Innovation List") is safer at launch than recognition of individuals ("Best Psychiatrists"). Start with the former. Move to the latter only after the site has established editorial credibility and a defensible individual-selection methodology.
Directory inclusion.
Any directory-style product on any network site (residency directory, program directory, innovation atlas, practice directory, resource library) must comply with the following.
Required.
- Inclusion criteria published publicly
- Submission does not equal inclusion (editorial judgment applies)
- No payment for favorable positioning, ever
- No payment for inclusion, ever
- Correction mechanism on every entry
- Last-verified date on every entry
- Distinction between "editorial context" and "reported by the organization" is clearly labeled
- No clinical-quality rankings unless a defensible methodology is published
- Rating systems, if any, require explicit methodology
Never permitted.
- "Pay $X to become a top [X]" schemes
- Anonymous ratings at launch
- Presentation of user-submitted claims as independently verified
- Directories that scrape or republish another directory (FREIDA, Residency Explorer, Psychology Today) verbatim without adding meaningful new information
- Directories that create expectations that listings are recommendations
Notification. After adding an entry, the listed organization is notified with an optional badge, share graphic, and correction link. The badge's language must accurately describe what happened ("Listed in the Psychiatry Residency Guide," "Included in the Innovation Atlas") and not imply endorsement or ranking.
Contributors and reviewers.
Any expert contributor or medical/pharmacy reviewer on any network site must comply with the following. Full details, application process, and per-site fits are at Contribute.
Required.
- Verifiable credentials (state license lookup, ABPN diplomate directory, BPS/BCPP, NPI registry, PhD/PsyD program of record, etc.)
- Written scope of practice statement
- Written disclosures (financial interests, industry relationships, employers, board seats, equity, speaker bureaus)
- Per-person canonical contributor profile URL at `/contributors/
/` - Auto-linked list of all pages the contributor has authored or reviewed
- Reviewer names appear only on pages that person actually reviewed and approved
- Written contributor agreement
Never permitted.
- Payment for a contribution
- Payment for a review
- Reviewer names on pages without actual review
- Decorative "medically reviewed by" signaling
- Contributions ghostwritten by staff and credited to a contributor
- Contributor bios inflated beyond verifiable credentials
- Contributions that are actually marketing for the contributor's product or practice
Suspension and revocation. If a contributor's credentials lapse, if they're subject to a licensure action, if a disclosure emerges that would change the meaning of their contribution, or if they violate the contributor agreement, their profile is suspended pending review. Every page they authored or reviewed gets an editorial re-check within 30 days.
Recusal for financial conflicts. Reviewers cannot approve pages about medications, devices, or services where they have a current financial relationship with the manufacturer or provider. That's a hard recusal, not a disclosure. Disclosure alone is not sufficient for this class of conflict.
Referral relationships and Anti-Kickback compliance.
The Shrink Network is founded by Shariq Refai, MD, who also owns shrinkMD. That single-owner relationship between an editorial network and a clinical practice is what makes this section load-bearing. Every editorial site must handle any potential connection to shrinkMD as if the federal Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS) applies, because for many patients and payers, it does.
Never permitted.
- Recognition, badges, awards, features, or free services tied to referral behavior
- Financial or in-kind compensation to referring clinicians
- Gift cards, meals, event tickets, honoraria, or other things of value offered in exchange for or with the expectation of referrals
- "Preferred referral" designations that clinicians can qualify for by referring
- Directory placement that depends on referral history
- Recognition selection that considers past or promised referrals
- Combined outreach that pairs an editorial feature with a referral request
- Language stating or implying "we featured you, so please refer"
Required for the Shrinkiatry Front Lines of Mental Health series and any similar program.
- Editorial feature is on Shrinkiatry (or another editorial site), not on shrinkMD
- Selection criteria are documented, published, and refer only to the clinician's actual work
- Recognition is offered without any request for referrals
- Any separate outreach from shrinkMD happens at least one week after the feature is published, in a separate communication
- The shrinkMD introduction explicitly states there is no referral arrangement or obligation
- The shrinkMD introduction is professional information about the practice, not a solicitation of referrals
- Written procedures for the outreach sequence are on file
- Legal review of the outreach template is on file
AMA ethics guidance. Physicians should decline gifts where reciprocity is expected or implied. The network's editorial recognition is not a gift and does not carry expected reciprocity. That is enforced by the separation above and by the written policy.
Sister-site link governance. Care routing across the network follows the five-option framework: primary care doctor, therapist through Psychology Today or insurance panel, in-network psychiatrist, shrinkMD as one telepsychiatry option, 988 for crisis. Every page suggesting clinical evaluation presents that menu with founder disclosure inline. See the care-routing framework.
Sponsorship and advertising.
Editorial sites in the network run no advertising. Shrinkopedia, Shrinktionary, Shrinkiatry, AnxietyResource, DepressionResource, AnxietyResearch, PsychiatryRx, ShrinkDaily, and ShrinkNetwork.com do not display advertisements, do not sell sponsored placements on editorial pages, and do not accept affiliate links on editorial pages.
Consumer tool sites (shrinQ, Unstuck, QuitScrolling) may have paid product features, but any editorial content on those sites follows the same no-advertising rule.
If sponsored content is ever introduced on any network site, it must:
- Be clearly and prominently labeled as sponsored, on every element of the page
- Be visually distinct from editorial content
- Not be indexed as editorial content (separate URL structure, separate schema type, no canonical to an editorial page)
- Not appear in editorial navigation or in editorial newsletters as editorial content
- Comply with FTC endorsement guidelines requiring truthful, non-misleading representations with clear material-relationship disclosure
No editorial coverage, no recognition selection, and no directory placement is influenced by sponsorship. Ever.
Data collection and research methodology.
Any original research report, survey, dataset, or published statistic on any network site must comply with the following before data collection begins.
Required before collection.
- Define the population under study
- Publish inclusion and exclusion criteria
- Retain exact question wording
- Disclose recruitment channels
- Establish data-handling protocol (no protected health information collected without proper authorization, no personally identifiable information collected without appropriate safeguards)
- Establish IRB/legal review pathway if the project could constitute human-subjects research or if the network plans academic publication
- Written methodology approved by an accountable person
Required in publication.
- Full methodology page linked from the report
- Sample size and demographics
- Sample limitations stated plainly
- Separation of observed results from interpretation
- Data dictionary for anonymized public data (where appropriate)
- Citation format prewritten and displayed
- Correction mechanism
- Version numbering and date-of-publication on every referenced statistic
Never permitted.
- Published statistics without a methodology
- "Studies show" language without naming the study
- Extrapolation from a small non-representative sample presented as broad
- Survey data that could identify individual respondents
- Fabricated respondents, quotes, or datapoints
- AI-generated statistics not backed by primary data
AI and editorial workflow.
See the full AI Use standard. Summary rules that apply to every property:
- AI may assist with research organization, drafting, and structural editing
- AI may not invent facts, sources, credentials, reviews, quotations, patient experiences, or clinical outcomes
- AI may not generate citations that aren't verifiable against a primary source
- AI-assisted pages carry the same author, reviewer, and evidence standards as any other page
- AI crawlers may read, index, cite, and train on network content with attribution, per the network AI and citation policy
- AI answer engines (that cite and link back) are welcomed
How to launch a new program under these rules.
If a network site wants to launch a new recognition program, directory, contributor system, referral product, sponsored placement, or research report, the sequence is:
- Read this page in full
- Read the Network Registry Standard
- Read the relevant kickoff prompt in /handoff/
- Draft a Page Justification Record per the page justification template
- Draft the program's governance page (its own criteria, methodology, disclosures, correction and revocation processes)
- Get sign-off from Shariq Refai, MD, MBA, FAPA
- Launch with the governance page live before any inaugural cohort
- Add a compliance audit to `pnpm audit:all` that verifies the program stays within the rules
No shortcut. Programs launched without this sequence get pulled and re-launched properly.
Enforcement.
These standards are enforced by:
- The audit chain: `pnpm audit:all` runs seven scripts on every deploy and quarterly, including registry-consistency and shrinkMD inbound-link contract
- The scheduled quarterly review that verifies every claim on every network site against its primary source (runbook at /docs/quarterly-site-review.md)
- The published corrections log at /corrections/
- The `/public/network-governance.json` machine-readable registry showing each sister site's declared status
- External reporting via Contact and Corrections
Reporting a violation.
If any network site publishes something that violates these rules, report it at Corrections or Contact. Every reported violation is logged, investigated, and either dismissed with an explanation or acted on with a public correction. Nothing is ignored.
Governance of this page.
This page is reviewed quarterly on the same cadence as every other governance page in the network. Material changes are logged in Corrections with a version bump. If a change makes the standard stricter, existing programs are given a defined window to comply. If a change makes the standard looser, the reasoning is published.
Feedback on the standard is welcomed at Contact or via pull request on the shrinknetwork.com repository.