About DepressionResource.org

Mission

DepressionResource.org exists because most depression content online is either too clinical to use or too thin to trust. The site is built to be neither. The aim is one place a person can land, in a hard week, and find plain, accurate, current information from a psychiatrist. Pages are written the way a thoughtful clinician would explain a topic in the room, with the technical detail kept available but not in the way. Every page is dated, reviewed against current clinical guidelines, and updated on a published schedule. The site is free to read, carries no advertising, and is editorially independent of every clinic, drug company, insurer, and platform it discusses. The intended outcome is simple: a reader who arrives confused leaves with a clearer picture of what is going on, what the next reasonable step is, and what to expect from a clinician who can take that step with them.

Who this site is for

Different readers come to a depression site at different points, and they need different things. The pages below try to meet each one where they are. None of these audiences are mutually exclusive, and the site is structured so that a reader who comes in for one purpose can find the next reasonable step without hunting for it.

People who are deciding whether to see a doctor. If symptoms have been around long enough that you have started to wonder, this site is built to help you sort that wondering into a clearer picture. The Symptoms and Screening Tools pages walk through what clinicians look for and what a PHQ-9 score means in plain terms, so the conversation with a clinician starts further along.

People who were just diagnosed. A new diagnosis often comes with more questions than the visit had time for. The Types, Treatment, and Living with Depression pages explain what the diagnosis usually means, what the first weeks of treatment look like, and what the realistic timeline for improvement is, so you can be a more informed partner in your own care.

Partners and family. Depression affects the people around the patient too. The Support Person Guide and the Safety Plan pages are written for the partner, parent, adult child, or close friend who wants to help without taking over, and who needs to know what crisis support actually looks like.

Clinicians and students using the site as a patient-handout reference. Primary care clinicians, residents, medical students, psychology trainees, and social workers are welcome to point patients here or to read pages for their own orientation. The site is written to be shareable in a visit and accurate enough to stand up to a clinician's read.

What this site is

• A public education resource on depression, mood, and related topics.
• Written and reviewed by a board-certified psychiatrist.
• Sourced from recognized clinical guidelines and peer-reviewed literature.
• Dated, with a clinical review schedule.
• Free to read, with no ads and no products for sale.

What this site is not

• Not a clinic. No one on this site is your treating clinician. Reading this site does not start a doctor-patient relationship and does not constitute medical advice for any individual reader.
• Not a directory. Where specific practices, hotlines, or services are named, they are listed as examples a reader can investigate, not as endorsements. The site receives no fee, commission, or referral revenue for any listing.
• Not an app. The site does not host a symptom tracker, mood journal, scoring quiz, or chatbot. The PHQ-9 and other tools are explained and pointed to at their original sources, not embedded.
• Not a marketing site. No advertising, no sponsored content, no paid placements, no affiliate links, no email funnel. Nothing on this site is for sale to readers.
• Not a HIPAA covered entity. Email sent to the site is not a secure clinical channel. Do not include medical history, symptoms, lab values, or other protected health information in correspondence.

Editorial process

Every clinical page on the site is produced through the same workflow. Pages are written against the current versions of the American Psychiatric Association, NICE, USPSTF, ACOG, and AACAP guidelines, with peer-reviewed literature filling in the gaps, and are reviewed by Dr. Refai for clinical accuracy, plain-language clarity, and alignment with current standards of care before publication. Pages are dated on publication, and the review date is updated whenever a meaningful clinical change is made.

The standards we hold ourselves to are on the Editorial Standards page. The step-by-step medical review workflow is on the Medical Review Process page. The clinical guideline bodies and peer-reviewed journals we draw from are listed on the Sources and Evidence page. When we get something wrong, we correct it openly and date the correction. The full procedure, including how readers can submit a correction request and what we publish when a substantive change is made, is on the Corrections Policy page.

Funding and conflicts of interest

The simplest way to read a health site honestly is to know who pays for it and what they sell. Here is that information up front.

DepressionResource.org is a publication of shrinkMD Publishing Inc., a private company. The site does not accept advertisements, sponsored content, paid placements, or affiliate links, and earns no commissions of any kind from any product, service, or practice mentioned on the site. Nothing on this site is for sale to readers. The site is funded entirely by shrinkMD Publishing Inc., which means the publisher has no incentive to favor any particular product, drug, or treatment provider.

The editor, Shariq Refai, MD, MBA, is the founder of shrinkMD, a telepsychiatry practice that is referenced on this site, and has a financial interest in it. This relationship is disclosed inline on every page that names the practice. Where it appears, it is listed as one of several resources, not as a recommendation. The site receives no fee, commission, or referral revenue for any listing.

The editor is also the author of the three books listed on the Books page and earns royalties on their sale. DepressionResource.org receives no revenue from book sales and does not sell the books. Book links go to the author's personal site at shariqrefai.com.

The editor has no industry consulting relationships with pharmaceutical companies or device makers.

Disclosure (FTC § 255). shrinkMD is a telepsychiatry practice operated by an affiliate of shrinkMD Publishing Inc., which publishes this site. The editor, Shariq Refai, MD, MBA, founded the practice and has a financial interest in it. It is listed here as one of several resources, not as a recommendation, and the site receives no fee, commission, or referral revenue for any listing.

Sister site

DepressionResource.org has a sister publication, AnxietyResource.org, which covers anxiety disorders with the same editorial standards, the same medical reviewer, and the same funding model. Depression and anxiety overlap in more than half of the people who seek care for either one, so many readers find one site through the topic they came in with and use the other for the conditions that often travel alongside it. Each site is editorially independent of the other in the sense that pages are reviewed on their own merits, but the two share a common voice, a common review schedule, and a common commitment to plain language and disclosed funding.

Accessibility commitment

We design and build for WCAG 2.1 Level AA and are evaluating the new WCAG 2.2 success criteria for incorporation into our internal testing matrix. The site is structured for screen readers, supports keyboard-only navigation, uses sufficient color contrast, and avoids motion that cannot be paused. We treat accessibility reports as priority editorial work, not as customer support. The full statement, including how to report a barrier, our response timelines, and how to escalate a complaint if our response does not resolve the issue, is on the Accessibility Statement page.

Privacy commitment

We collect the minimum data needed to operate the site. We do not sell reader data, do not run behavioral ad targeting, and do not place third-party advertising trackers. We do not require a login to read any page, and we do not build profiles of individual readers. The full statement, including what is collected, how it is used, how long it is retained, and how to make a data subject request under CCPA, CPRA, or GDPR, is on the Privacy Policy page.

Our promise to readers

We write in plain language, keep pages dated, correct errors openly, source from recognized clinical guidelines, keep crisis information prominent wherever it matters, and decline to sell anything to our readers. We do not give individual medical advice. Where our editor has a financial interest, we disclose it inline on the page.

Contact

For editorial questions, corrections, accessibility, privacy, press, or legal inquiries, see the Contact page. We cannot provide individual medical advice by email. If you are in crisis, call or text 988 or call 911.

Ownership

DepressionResource.org is a publication of shrinkMD Publishing Inc., a Florida corporation. The publishing company is privately held and is not owned by any pharmaceutical company, insurer, hospital system, or platform. The same publisher also operates the sister publication AnxietyResource.org, and both publications share the same medical reviewer, the same review schedule, and the same disclosed funding model. The mailing address for the publisher is on the Contact page.