Last reviewed September 16, 2026.

IPW Health publishes material about psychiatric conditions and their treatment. People make decisions about their health after reading pages like these, so this page sets out how that material is produced, who is accountable for it, and how to tell us when we have got something wrong.

Who writes and reviews this content

Clinical content is written and reviewed by the clinical team at Integrative Psychiatry and Wellness, under the responsibility of Shahrzad Shadmani, MSN, APRN, PMHNP-BC, FNP-C, dual board-certified as a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (ANCC) and a Family Nurse Practitioner (AANP). Her license numbers and National Provider Identifier are published on our About page so they can be checked against the state boards directly.

We do not publish clinical content written by people without clinical training and not reviewed by someone with it.

What we use as sources

We rely on professional guidelines and government health bodies rather than secondary summaries. In practice that means sources such as the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the US Preventive Services Task Force, the National Institutes of Health and its institutes, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the FDA’s approved product labeling. Where a diagnostic definition is involved, it follows the DSM-5-TR.

Sources are listed at the foot of each clinical article by organization and document, so you can find the current version rather than a copy frozen at the date we wrote.

How we handle uncertainty

Psychiatry contains a great deal that is genuinely unsettled, and we would rather say so than round it off. Our standard is to state claims at the confidence the evidence actually supports: established findings as established, leading explanations as hypotheses, and open questions as open. Where a mechanism is a working theory rather than a settled fact, we say that in the text.

We do not cite statistics, studies or figures we cannot attribute to a named source.

What we deliberately do not publish

  • Dosing, regimens or titration schedules. Medication decisions depend on an individual history and belong in an appointment, not on a web page.
  • Recommendations to start, stop or change any medication or supplement.
  • Claims for unvalidated testing. We do not promote broad “functional” panels, hair mineral analysis or IgG food sensitivity testing, and we do not use them.
  • Guaranteed outcomes. No honest clinician can promise a result.
  • Invented patient stories presented as real, or testimonials we did not receive.

This is education, not medical advice

Reading anything on this site does not create a patient–provider relationship, and none of it is a substitute for an evaluation by a clinician who knows your history. Articles describe conditions in general terms; your situation may differ in ways that change the answer entirely.

Reviews and updates

Clinical articles carry a publication date. We review them when guidance changes, when we find an error, or when a reader tells us something is wrong or out of date. Where an article has been substantially revised, the date reflects the revision rather than the first publication.

Corrections

If something here is inaccurate, unclear or out of date, we want to know. Email shahrzad-np@ipwhealth.com or call (949) 259-5123 and tell us which page and what is wrong. We correct errors of fact rather than quietly deleting the page, and we would rather hear it from you than leave it up.

Advertising and independence

We do not accept payment to feature, recommend or review any product, supplement, test or service, and nothing on this site is sponsored content. Where we describe what IPW Health offers, we say so plainly so you can tell the difference between education and a description of our services.

If you are in crisis or having thoughts of harming yourself, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, available 24 hours a day in the United States. If you are in immediate danger, call 911.