Editorial Policy

mindliftapp.app is the website for the MindLift app, a self-help tool built on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for people who want a kinder response to harsh self-talk. The guides, articles, and quizzes here are educational. They explain thought patterns and the CBT techniques that address them, and they show how the app applies those techniques.

This site is not therapy, and reading it is not treatment. Nothing here diagnoses a condition, and we do not give advice about starting, stopping, or changing medication. The quizzes are self-reflection tools that name a thinking pattern; they are not clinical assessments and do not screen for any disorder. If something you read here makes you think you need more than a self-help tool, that is a good reason to talk to a licensed professional.

We write about the thoughts people actually bring to the app and search for: overthinking, self-criticism, anxiety loops, rumination at 3am, replaying conversations, second-guessing decisions. A topic earns an article when CBT has something concrete to offer for that moment, usually a way to notice the thought, name the pattern behind it, and answer it with something more accurate.

We do not write about a topic just because it is searched for. Where quick self-help is the wrong tool, the article says so and points to professional care instead of stretching a reframe to fit.

MindLift content draws on a small, well-studied set of methods rather than whatever is trending:

• Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT): cognitive restructuring, thought records, and the catalogue of cognitive distortions (the "thinking traps" the app names).
• Cognitive defusion, from acceptance and commitment therapy: creating distance from a thought so you can look at it rather than from it.
• Self-affirmation research: writing about what you value, as distinct from repeating positive statements you do not believe. Affirmations can appear inside an article; they are never the promise.
• Positive psychology and sleep, stress, and rumination research where an article needs it.

Claims about what works are sourced to peer-reviewed research, and we prefer meta-analyses and randomized trials over single studies. Where the evidence is thin or mixed, the article says so instead of rounding up.

Every DOI we cite is checked against CrossRef before it is published, so a citation has to resolve to the real paper with the right authors, title, and year. Articles that cite research render a visible sources list, and at build time that same list is copied into the article's machine-readable schema (Article.citation). The citations a reader sees are the citations a search engine or AI assistant sees; there is no second, prettier list.

Articles are written by the MindLift editorial team, the people who build the app. Bylines say "MindLift Team" because that is who wrote them.

An article shows a named reviewer only when a licensed professional has actually reviewed it. Until then, bylines are the MindLift editorial team and no reviewer is listed. When a reviewer is named, the article links to a page off this site where their credential can be checked, such as a state license lookup, a faculty page, or an ORCID record. We do not list team names, job titles, or degrees as reviewers, and we do not describe an article as clinically reviewed unless someone with a clinical license did the reviewing.

For the same reason, this site carries no invented social proof. Ratings, user counts, and quotes appear only when they are real and can be checked; store reviews are quoted verbatim, and example reframes are labelled as examples, not as reviews.

Each article shows the date it was published and, when the content changes in a way that matters, the date it was updated. Fixing a typo does not move the date; changing a claim, a source, or a recommendation does. Research moves, and an article that no longer reflects it gets revised or retired.

If something here is wrong, we want to know. Send the article URL and what you think is incorrect to mindliftmindlift@gmail.com.

We check the claim against the source, fix the article if it is wrong, and update its date. Reports of a broken or misattributed citation are treated the same way.