Editorial Policy

This policy covers Minds Vary articles, topic pages, guides, author information, support pages, and other editorial material. It sets the threshold for content described as approved, sourced, updated, or professionally reviewed. Current launch articles carry visible source and review disclosures. Fictional contributor profiles remain clearly labelled and excluded from search indexing.

Minds Vary covers mental health and neurodiversity, subjects that can affect health, safety, identity, and important life decisions. That makes honest sourcing and visible limitations essential. A polished page is not enough if the claims, authorship, or review status cannot be supported.

A topic should fit the publication's focus and answer a plausible reader need: understanding an experience, supporting another person, preparing to seek professional help, or making daily life more workable. Search demand can help reveal a question, but it should not determine the answer or encourage content outside the project's competence.

Headlines and introductions should describe the page accurately. We avoid shock, false urgency, universal claims, diagnostic quizzes disguised as articles, and titles such as “signs you definitely have” a condition. We do not change dates merely to make an unchanged page look new.

Writers should begin with the question the page needs to answer, identify which claims could affect health or safety, and find sources suited to those claims. A draft should explain relevant context, important limitations, and when an online article is not enough.

Plain language does not mean removing complexity. It means defining terms, keeping paragraphs readable, showing what is known and unknown, and avoiding jargon that creates distance without adding precision.

• Describe, do not diagnoseA reader may recognise an experience without that recognition confirming a condition.
• Offer options, not commandsPractical suggestions should allow for different bodies, cultures, resources, and support needs.
• State the boundaryPages should identify when qualified, local, or urgent support may be more appropriate.

Minds Vary uses “evidence-informed” to describe an approach, not a blanket guarantee. Relevant guidelines, evidence syntheses, peer-reviewed studies, public-health information, and primary sources can inform a page. The strongest source depends on the question being asked.

Lived experience can explain how something feels, how language lands, or why a support may be difficult to access. It should not be presented as proof that every person will have the same experience or outcome. Conflicting evidence, weak evidence, and important gaps should be stated rather than smoothed over.

A byline should identify the person or team responsible for the article. A profile should include only accurate background that is relevant to the work. Credentials, affiliations, pronouns, locations, and experience must not be invented or presented without permission and verification.

Editing for structure, tone, grammar, and source clarity is not the same as medical review. “Medically reviewed,” “clinically reviewed,” or similar labels apply only to a specific page reviewed by a named qualified person within a defined scope. The reviewer, relevant credentials, and review date should be visible on that page.

Content involving suicide, self-harm, medication, abuse, eating disorders, psychosis, severe distress, or other high-risk subjects requires stronger sourcing, careful language, early support routes, and review proportionate to the risk and claims. Detailed clinical interpretation or intervention guidance needs appropriately qualified professional review before approval.

We avoid method details, sensational framing, romanticising distress, fear-based imagery, and instructions that could increase risk. Immediate-support information should appear early and should never send a person to an unmonitored Minds Vary contact route.

People use different language for identity, disability, diagnosis, and lived experience. Where there is no single preference, writing should acknowledge that difference rather than declare one universal term correct. Identity-first and person-first language can both be appropriate depending on the person and context.

We do not reduce a person to a diagnosis, describe support needs as moral failure, or imply that one way of thinking is the standard against which every mind should be measured. Quotations and first-person accounts should preserve the speaker's meaning without turning one account into a universal story.

AI-assisted tools may help structure, draft, summarise, edit, or produce prototype material. They are not sources, reviewers, clinicians, or accountable authors. Generated wording can be inaccurate, flatten nuance, invent references, or reproduce bias and must not be published unchecked as health guidance.

Human editorial responsibility remains required for the final question, source selection, factual accuracy, safety language, disclosures, and publication decision. Material use of automation should be explained when a reasonable reader would want to know how the content was made.

Factual errors, misleading wording, broken references, missing safety context, and material changes in evidence should be reviewed and corrected. A significant correction should be visible on the article; a minor copy edit does not need to be presented as a substantive update.

Publication and update dates must reflect real work. A page does not receive a new date only to look fresh in search results. The current site has no monitored corrections inbox, and the Contact page states that limitation directly.

As of this page update, the site does not contain advertising, sponsored editorial, affiliate links, paid subscriptions, or a public commercial partnership programme. That current state is not a promise that the publication model will never change.

If advertising, sponsorship, affiliate relationships, free products, or paid partnerships are introduced, the relationship should be labelled where the reader encounters it. Commercial involvement must not determine a health conclusion, hide a conflict, or make promotional material look like independent editorial guidance.