Our Medical Review Process

How the educational content in this guide gets checked before it goes live, and who checks it.

Why this page exists

Eating disorders are medical and psychological conditions, and getting information about them wrong can cause real harm — delayed treatment, self-diagnosis in place of a real evaluation, or copy that unintentionally reads as medical advice instead of general education. Every page in this guide goes through a clinical review before it’s published, and this page explains what that review actually involves.

Who reviews our content

What clinical review checks for

• Accuracy against current DSM-5 criteria, and clear labeling where something (like orthorexia or disordered eating) is not a formal DSM-5 diagnosis
• No language implying a guaranteed treatment outcome or a cure
• No specific medical thresholds (weight, BMI, lab values) stated without clinical sign-off, since those numbers carry real risk if used incorrectly by a reader
• Appropriate framing for topics with real medical urgency, such as the acute risks of anorexia or the electrolyte risks of purging behaviors
• Clear, prominent language that nothing on this site is a diagnostic tool, and that only a licensed clinician can diagnose an eating disorder

Content status

Pages in this guide move through three states: drafted, under clinical review, and published. We don’t publish drafted content before it’s been reviewed. If you notice something on a published page that looks inaccurate or out of date, please let us know so it can be corrected.

How this fits with getting help

This guide is educational, not a substitute for care. If anything you read here resonates with your own experience or a loved one’s, the next step is a conversation with a licensed clinician, not a self-diagnosis from this page. See our admissions page to talk with someone, or our self-assessment tool as a starting point.

Frequently asked questions

How often is this guide reviewed after it’s first published?

Every new page and every content addition goes through the same clinical review before publishing — including expansions to already-live pages, like the one this packet represents. Content isn’t reviewed once and then left alone indefinitely; anything added later goes through the same process described on this page.

What happens if something on a published page turns out to be inaccurate later?

If an inaccuracy is identified — whether flagged by Clarissa, a reader, or a later review — the page is corrected and, if the change is clinically meaningful, re-reviewed before the correction goes live.