Editorial standards

Our mission

Cope Compass exists to help people in recovery from gambling and related compulsive behaviors get evidence-based support, find qualified clinicians and peer programs, and stay connected to the people walking with them.

Recovery content can shape decisions about treatment, money, family, and crisis response. We hold it to that standard. The editorial principles below are not marketing copy. They are the working rules our team writes by.

• No shame, no resets. Streaks reframed as journeys. Slips do not erase progress.
• No gambling mechanics. No badges that mimic slot machines, no variable rewards, no hooks borrowed from the harm we exist to counter.
• Plain language first. Clinical terms get translated, not dropped on the reader.
• Crisis safety always. Suicide and self-harm content follows AFSP and SAMHSA safe-messaging guidelines.

Review team

Cope Compass content goes through review by a team that combines internal editors, peer reviewers with lived experience, and licensed clinical reviewers.

• Editorial staff. Internal editors handle the writing, voice, and structure of every piece, and act as the first line of fact-checking and tone review.
• Peer reviewers. People with first-hand experience in gambling and addiction recovery review content for accuracy of lived-experience framing and for harm-reduction language.
• Clinical reviewers. Licensed clinicians (LCSW, LMFT, LPC, MD, PhD) review content that touches on diagnosis, treatment, medication, or crisis response before publish.

Review process

Content moves through three checkpoints before it goes live.

1. Draft. Editorial staff write or supervise the drafting of each piece. Sources are gathered with the copy, not bolted on at the end.
2. Edit. A second reviewer edits for clarity, voice, and adherence to the principles above. Pieces that describe symptoms, treatment, medication, or any clinical claim continue to the next step. Pieces that do not skip the clinical pass.
3. Clinical sign-off. A licensed clinician reviews the piece end to end before publish.

Pages without a clinical sign-off do not include clinical claims. We do not put medical claims into general copy and hope nobody notices.

Sourcing standards

We treat sources the way a careful clinician would.

What we cite

• National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG) and state councils on compulsive gambling.
• SAMHSA, the CDC, and the National Institutes of Health for treatment and epidemiology.
• The DSM-5-TR and ICD-10 for diagnostic frameworks.
• Peer-reviewed journals indexed in PubMed, Cochrane, or comparable.
• Court and regulatory documents when a legal claim is at stake (state self-exclusion programs, treatment-court orders).
• First-hand interviews with clinicians and people in recovery, with consent on file.

What we do not cite

• Unattributed forum posts, anonymous threads, or social-media screenshots as factual sources.
• Content from operators of gambling products as authority on gambling harms.
• AI-generated "summaries of the literature" without an underlying named study.

When a number appears in our content (prevalence, treatment outcomes, financial harm), it links to a primary source. If we cannot find a primary source for a claim, we either rephrase to remove the claim or hold the piece.

How we use AI

We use large language models as a drafting and research aid, and we are explicit about it.

• AI does not have a byline. Pieces are credited to the humans who wrote, edited, and reviewed them.
• No clinical claim ships without a licensed reviewer. AI-drafted text describing symptoms, treatment, or risk goes through clinical sign-off before publish.
• AI does not invent sources. Every citation is verified by a human against the primary document.
• Personal stories are real. First-person narratives are written by the person who lived them or transcribed verbatim from interviews. We do not generate testimonials.

Corrections policy

If a page has a factual error, we want to know. We publish substantive corrections with a timestamp and a short summary of what changed.

• Email [email protected] with the URL and the issue.
• We respond within five business days, faster for clinical or crisis-related errors.
• Substantive corrections show a dated note on the page. Typo-level fixes do not.
• If we got it wrong, we say so plainly. We do not silently rewrite history.

Editorial independence

We do not accept payment for placement in the directory or for editorial coverage. Editorial decisions are made by the review team independently of any commercial relationship.

When a piece of editorial content references a commercial relationship, the relationship is disclosed in that piece.

Crisis safe-messaging

Suicide, self-harm, and acute-crisis content follows the Reporting on Suicide guidelines and SAMHSA's safe-messaging framework.

• No method details. No glamorization. No simplified single-cause framing.
• Crisis hotlines (988 in the United States, country-specific equivalents elsewhere) are surfaced on any page that touches the topic.
• First-person stories about crisis are reviewed for safe-messaging adherence before publish.
• Imagery follows the same rules. We do not use distress imagery as decoration.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 (United States) or the equivalent line in your country.

Privacy in personal stories

Recovery is private until the person tells us otherwise. We hold the line strictly.

• Personal stories use real names only when the subject explicitly opts in, in writing, with knowledge of the publication context.
• Pseudonyms are the default. They are flagged as pseudonyms.
• Identifying details (employer, exact location, family member names) are altered or removed before publish unless the subject specifically asks otherwise.
• Stories can be unpublished by the subject at any time, no questions asked.

Contact the editors

Reach a human on the editorial team:

• General editorial: [email protected]
• Corrections: [email protected]
• Clinical content questions: [email protected]

For general help with the product, see support. For HIPAA and compliance questions, see trust and compliance.