About the HelpGuide Handbook Team: Who We Are and How We Test

The Handbook Team is made up of writers, editors, R&D professionals, and medical experts independent of HelpGuide, who are dedicated to developing highly accurate, meticulously researched content for the HelpGuide audience.

While we are distinct from the HelpGuide staff, we partner closely with their team to provide trustworthy recommendations for health products and services based on firsthand experience. All Handbook content adheres to HelpGuide.org’s editorial guidelines and commitment to accuracy, transparency, and objectivity.

Together, our process begins with the ideation and selection of all categories chosen for review. Our in-house team of editors reviews every piece of content we write, and we send it to outside fact-checkers. Then, it’s reviewed by a health or medical expert in the applicable field. Based on this expert feedback, our content is edited a second time by another in-house editor. The HelpGuide team provides the final layer of oversight, reviewing and editing each article prior to publication to ensure the stories are as helpful as possible for our readers.

Every part of our process aligns with HelpGuide’s mission: to provide empowering, evidence-based information that you can use to help yourself and your loved ones strengthen your mental health and wellness. So, every category we write about is closely connected to mental, physical, emotional, and social health and well-being—and HelpGuide is involved from start to finish in each story we create.

Our Reviews Process

Our reviews are really investigations: In a process specifically designed for and with the HelpGuide team, we hand-test products, mystery shop the purchasing experience, and work with health and medical professionals in a variety of fields to analyze whether a brand lives up to its claims. The resulting Handbook content is hyper-curated and completely proprietary to HelpGuide, either boasting our stamp of approval or our strong word of caution.

We recognize that when you’re shopping for a health care product or service, you’re often rushing, navigating a sea of options, and putting the health of yourself or someone you care about in the hands of another. This can be very stressful, and that’s why we take our reviewing process so seriously. We’ve been there, and we care about helping you find exactly what you need, when you need it.

The first step in our process is deep research. What does our medical advisory board have to say? What does our research and development team think of the current product or service landscape?

Next, we’re ready to get our hands dirty. Our R&D team curates our hands-on product testing to the specifications of the device we’re handling. Not many products get our nod of approval. Some may call us picky—too discerning. To us, there’s no such thing. When it comes to health care devices big and small and health services of all kinds, you want the safest and most reliable ones available for yourself or the friends, family, or care recipient you’re shopping for. 

That’s why we thoroughly test every product and service ourselves. Our Handbook Team physical therapist got folded into a human sandwich in an adjustable bed test gone wrong before crawling on the ground with a decibel meter to calculate how a brand’s “whisper-quiet” claim stacked up against an actual whisper. It’s all in a day’s work. Services face the same level of critique. We don’t recommend ones we haven’t tried ourselves and evaluated based on specific criteria we developed just for HelpGuide’s audience.

Additionally, each of our writers is a subject matter expert for their category, having performed extensive research, interviews, testing, and assessments to deeply understand the content they’re writing about and the needs of their audience.

We do what’s necessary to bring you unbiased recommendations you need to help understand whether something is worth your time and money. That’s because we’re experts who care about getting you to the right product or service quickly and easily—we’re here to help.