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Porn Addiction Test: Do You Actually Have a Problem?

2,198 prose words · 25 citations · primary keyword: porn addiction test · meta description (157/160 chars)

Key Takeaways

Something real is happening. The distress and loss of control people feel around pornography use are genuine — the World Health Organization now recognizes Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder (CSBD) in its global disease classification, with problematic pornography use as its most common form.
A screening score is a signal, not a verdict. Porn addiction tests are designed to flag people who may need a closer look — they can't confirm a clinical diagnosis, and guilt alone can push a score higher even when use isn't clinically disordered.
The clearest warning sign is loss of choice. If cutting back or stopping has stopped feeling like a real option — and the behavior keeps causing problems you can clearly see — that's the pattern most worth taking seriously.
Shame and actual dysregulation are different things. Research shows that roughly a quarter of people seeking help for pornography concerns show high moral conflict about their use but no objective loss of control — meaning shame can mimic addiction symptoms.
Treatment exists and is improving. Cognitive behavioral therapy is the most studied approach, and early evidence for self-guided programs is encouraging — though the field is still young and no single gold-standard protocol has been established yet.
A high score deserves a conversation, not a self-verdict. Only a structured clinical interview with a qualified clinician can determine whether what you're experiencing meets criteria for a disorder — and that conversation is worth having.

Maybe you've noticed that pornography use is taking up more of your time than you'd like. Maybe you've tried to cut back and found it harder than expected, or you're watching it in situations where you really shouldn't be. Or maybe you just have a nagging feeling that something is off, and you want an honest read on whether that feeling means anything.

That's exactly what this page is for. Not to shame you, not to hand you a label — but to help you look clearly at what's actually going on and figure out whether it's worth doing something about.

Is problematic porn use a real thing?

The phrase "porn addiction" is what most people search. The clinical world uses different language, and that gap is part of why this question feels confusing.

Here's the short version: something real is happening for people who feel out of control around pornography, and that experience now has an official home in the diagnostic system. The World Health Organization added Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder (CSBD) to the ICD-11 — its global classification of diseases — and problematic pornography use (PPU) is recognized as its most common form [bőthe-2024-problematic-pornography-use]. The terms "porn addiction," "sexual addiction," and "hypersexual disorder" all describe overlapping territory that researchers are still working to map precisely [1]✓ Verified knowledgeBriken et al. (2024) — Assessment treatment compulsive.

That official recognition matters, but it doesn't end the debate. Serious researchers have raised legitimate concerns: that diagnostic criteria borrowed too heavily from substance use and gambling, that the science has real weaknesses, and that formalizing a disorder too quickly risks labeling normal behavior as pathological [2]✓ Verified knowledgeAarseth et al. (2017) — Scholars open debate. Others point out that moral attitudes toward sex can be mistaken for clinical symptoms — meaning someone might feel "addicted" largely because they feel shame, not because their behavior is genuinely out of control [1]✓ Verified knowledgeBriken et al. (2024) — Assessment treatment compulsive. These are honest scientific tensions, not fringe objections.

What the evidence does support: PPU is associated with real consequences for mental health, relationships, and well-being [3]✓ Verified knowledgeInce et al. (2026) — Compulsive sexual behavior. The distress and loss of control people experience are real and treatable. Whether "addiction" is precisely the right word is still being worked out — and that uncertainty doesn't make anyone's struggle less valid.

What a porn addiction test is actually measuring

When you search for a porn addiction test, what you usually want to know is simple: is what I'm experiencing a real problem, or am I overreacting? A screening tool is a starting point for answering that — but it helps to understand what it can and can't tell you.

Screening tools don't diagnose the way a blood test confirms an infection. They compare your responses against patterns found in research populations and flag whether your experience resembles what clinicians see in people who are struggling. Researchers tend to call this pattern "problematic pornography use" (PPU) — a term that captures the functional harm without requiring agreement on whether it meets a strict addiction definition.

Different scales measure slightly different things:

Overall severity of problematic use. The Problematic Pornography Consumption Scale (PPCS) and its shorter version, the PPCS-6, were built to classify use as problematic or non-problematic, and both have been validated against measures like hypersexuality and compulsive use patterns [chen-2020-assessment-problematic-internet, bőthe-2021-short-version-problematic].
Why you're using it. Some tools look at motivation — for pleasure, to escape stress, out of curiosity — because motivation shapes both the pattern of use and what kind of support tends to help [4]✓ Verified knowledgeReid et al. (2011) — Reliability validity psychometric.
Craving specifically. Other tools measure the intrusive thoughts and the pull toward use even when you don't want to act on it [kraus-2014-pornography-craving-questionnaire, benbrahim-2024-strength-pornography-craving].

What a screening score cannot tell you is whether pornography use is causing broader dissatisfaction in your life or reflecting it. A meta-analysis pooling 41 studies and more than 70,000 participants found a statistically significant but very small negative correlation between pornography use and sexual satisfaction overall — and the effect varied meaningfully by study design [5]✓ Verified knowledgeAbdi et al. (2025) — Effect pornography use. That's honest uncertainty, not evasion.

A screen result is a signal worth taking seriously, not a verdict.

How do you know when porn use has become a problem?

Pornography use exists on a spectrum, and most people who watch it never develop a problem. The harder question — the one that brings most people to a page like this — is where ordinary use ends and something more serious begins.

Researchers have identified a few distinct patterns worth knowing about:

Impaired control. Repeatedly trying to cut back or stop and finding it genuinely difficult — not just inconvenient. A large study of help-seeking men found that impaired control at one point in time predicted more severe problematic use six months later, and the reverse was also true, suggesting the two reinforce each other over time [6]✓ Verified knowledgeChen et al. (2022) — Role impaired control. That bidirectional relationship matters because it means waiting rarely makes things easier.
Negative consequences that persist despite awareness of them. Problems at work, in relationships, or with sleep that you can see clearly but can't seem to stop [7]✓ Verified knowledgeJiang et al. (2022) — Symptoms problematic pornography use. Among college students in one study, those who reported difficulty controlling their use also scored higher on measures of depression and anxiety [8]✓ Verified knowledgeOkabe et al. (2021) — Problematic pornography use. The direction of that link is genuinely unsettled — distress and problematic use tend to travel together, but the science doesn't yet confirm which drives which [9]✓ Verified knowledgeEngelhardt et al. (2025) — Problematic pornography use.
Salience and mood modification. Pornography becoming a primary way of managing stress or difficult emotions, and thoughts about it crowding out other things [7]✓ Verified knowledgeJiang et al. (2022) — Symptoms problematic pornography use. High problematic-use scores have also been linked to low self-esteem and difficulties with attachment [10]✓ Verified knowledgeKor et al. (2014) — Psychometric development problematic.
Continued use despite real costs. This is the cluster that distinguishes loss of control from heavy-but-manageable use — and it's what a structured assessment is designed to detect [11]✓ Verified knowledgeGarcia et al. (2010) — Sexual addictions.

One thing the evidence does not support cleanly: the idea that watching pornography inevitably damages sexual satisfaction. The meta-analysis mentioned above found a very small average negative correlation (r = −0.06), with the effect in men alone not reaching statistical significance [5]✓ Verified knowledgeAbdi et al. (2025) — Effect pornography use. That's an average across all users — it doesn't rule out a meaningful effect for individuals whose use has become compulsive.

The clearest signal that something has shifted: the behavior is causing real problems, and stopping or cutting back has stopped feeling like a choice.

Why does some people's use spiral out of control?

Most people who watch pornography never feel like it's running their life. For a smaller group, something shifts — use starts to feel compulsive, attempts to cut back fail, and the behavior continues despite real costs. Understanding why that happens doesn't require blaming willpower.

Sexual behavior activates the nucleus accumbens, the same brain structure that mediates the reinforcing effects of cocaine, alcohol, nicotine, and food [12]✓ Verified knowledgeBlum et al. (2015) — Hypersexuality addiction withdrawal. That's not a metaphor — it's the same circuitry, processing the same basic signal: this mattered, do it again. For most people, that system stays calibrated. For others, repeated exposure appears to alter how the brain responds to sexual cues specifically.

Neuroimaging research points to something concrete here. In men seeking treatment for problematic pornography use, the ventral striatum showed heightened activation to cues predicting erotic images — not to the images themselves — compared to men without the problem [13]✓ Verified knowledgeGola et al. (2017) — Can pornography addictive. That distinction matters: the brain is reacting strongly to anticipation, which is the neural signature of craving rather than simple enjoyment. A separate brain-imaging study found that neural responses to sexual content correlated with indicators of compulsive sexual behavior, and that activation was also associated with depression and anxiety scores [14]✓ Verified knowledgePrantner et al. (2024) — Magnetoencephalographic correlates pornography.

Craving itself appears to scale with frequency of use: heavier users report stronger craving than lighter users, independent of other factors [15]✓ Verified knowledgeKraus et al. (2014) — Pornography craving questionnaire. Researchers have also found that how much someone's use drops as hypothetical costs rise is meaningfully linked to hypersexuality symptoms in both general and clinical samples [16]✓ Verified knowledgeMulhauser et al. (2018) — Development psychometric evaluation.

None of this means the outcome is fixed. It means the pattern has a mechanism — and mechanisms can be worked with.

What do your test results actually mean?

A high score on a porn addiction screening tool is worth taking seriously. It is not a diagnosis.

Screening tests are designed to cast a wide net. They're built to catch people who might have a problem so those people can get a closer look — not to confirm that a problem definitively exists. Research on behavioral screening tools more broadly shows that when a disorder is relatively uncommon in the general population, a positive result carries a surprisingly high proportion of false positives [17]✓ Verified knowledgeMaraz et al. (2015) — Commentary overpathologizing everyday. Only a structured clinical interview can establish whether a behavior is truly pathological [17]✓ Verified knowledgeMaraz et al. (2015) — Commentary overpathologizing everyday.

There's also an important nuance about what's actually driving a high score. Among an 8,845-person help-seeking sample, latent profile analysis found that roughly half showed objectively impaired control over their pornography use — but about a quarter showed high moral conflict about pornography with no objective dysregulation [6]✓ Verified knowledgeChen et al. (2022) — Role impaired control. In plain terms: guilt or shame about pornography use can produce a high score even when the use itself isn't clinically disordered.

Different screening instruments also vary in how well they distinguish problematic from non-problematic use, which is one reason the same person can score differently depending on which questionnaire they take [18]✓ Verified knowledgeChen et al. (2020) — Assessment problematic internet.

A low score, meanwhile, doesn't automatically mean everything is fine. If pornography use is causing real distress or relationship harm, that experience matters regardless of where a number lands.

What a high score should prompt: a conversation with a clinician, not a self-verdict.

What does treatment actually look like?

If you've taken a porn addiction test and scored high — or if a gut feeling is telling you something is off — the next question is almost always: what actually helps?

The honest answer is that treatment research for PPU is still young, and no single protocol has been established as the gold standard [19]✓ Verified knowledgeZwielewski et al. (2026) — Cognitive behavioral therapy. But that doesn't mean nothing works.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)

CBT is the most studied approach. It targets the thoughts, triggers, and habits that keep compulsive use going — cue recognition, impulse control, cognitive restructuring, and relapse planning. A scoping review of CBT-based protocols published between 2019 and 2024 identified 11 qualifying studies and found that interventions varied considerably: some used CBT alone, others combined it with acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) or mindfulness-based practices [19]✓ Verified knowledgeZwielewski et al. (2026) — Cognitive behavioral therapy. No standardized protocol has yet emerged, which means a therapist experienced in compulsive sexual behavior will likely draw from several frameworks rather than following one rigid script — and that's not a red flag, it reflects where the science genuinely is.

For some people, the distress driving them to seek help is less about frequency of behavior and more about a conflict between their behavior and their values. Therapy that explores that tension directly — rather than focusing only on stopping the behavior — has shown meaningful results in those cases [20]✓ Verified knowledgeSmaniotto et al. (2022) — Pornography addiction elements.

Self-guided programs

Self-guided online programs have shown early promise. A six-week randomized controlled trial found that participants assigned to a structured self-help intervention reported significantly lower PPU levels at follow-up compared to a waitlist control group (d = 1.32), along with lower use frequency (d = 1.65) and reduced craving [bőthe-2021-hands-off-feasibility]. The caveat matters: dropout in the intervention arm was high — 89.4% — so those results reflect people who stayed engaged, not everyone who started.

Imaginal retraining

A separate randomized trial tested imaginal retraining, a technique that works by repeatedly pairing pornographic cues with mental images of turning away from them. Among participants who completed the protocol at least once weekly, PPU scores dropped significantly compared to controls — but when all enrolled participants were analyzed regardless of adherence, that difference disappeared [21]✓ Verified knowledgeBaumeister et al. (2024) — Reducing problematic pornography. The technique may help, but only if someone actually uses it consistently.

Medication

Medication is sometimes considered alongside therapy, not instead of it. Opioid antagonists (naltrexone, nalmefene), SSRIs, and a handful of other drug classes have been studied, but most available data come from case studies rather than controlled trials, so generalizability is limited [22]✓ Verified knowledgeMestrebach et al. (2024) — Current understanding compulsive. Medication choices are also shaped by whatever else is going on — depression, anxiety, ADHD, and OCD frequently co-occur with CSBD, and those overlapping conditions matter for treatment planning [23]✓ Verified knowledgePuszcz et al. (2025) — Neurobiological pathways linking.

What happens when you decide to get help?

If a screening result — or just a gut feeling — is pushing you toward help, the first thing to know is that treatment for PPU and CSBD is real, available, and improving, even though the evidence base is still catching up to the need.

The recommended starting point is referral to a clinician experienced in sexual disorders [24]✓ Verified knowledgeColeman et al. (2003) — Assessment treatment compulsive. That person will do more than administer another questionnaire — they'll conduct a structured clinical interview, look at what else might be going on (mood disorders, anxiety, relationship factors), and help you figure out what kind of support actually fits your situation.

When the picture is complicated, or when you're not sure where to start, that kind of individualized assessment matters more than any score on a screening tool. Some structured treatment programs specifically designed for PPU now exist [25]✓ Verified knowledgeStark et al. (2024) — Pornlos treatment program, and a clinician can help you figure out whether a formal program, individual therapy, or some combination makes the most sense.

None of this is a quick fix. But for most people who engage with care, it is a solvable problem.

Real Life Story

The bottle in the water bottle

She had been sober for a meaningful stretch when it happened almost by accident — a drink she hadn't intended to finish, at a restaurant, on a date. She told herself it was a fluke. Then she told herself she had proven something: that she could handle it now. A week later she was decanting wine into a bottle labeled zero-percent, so the people who loved her wouldn't know. The night after that, there was vodka in a water bottle in her bag. She would reflect later that the most frightening part wasn't the relapse itself — it was how convincingly her own mind had narrated each step as evidence of control. The story she told herself and the story that was actually unfolding were not the same story at all.

Her experience captures one of the most well-documented features of problematic drinking: the mind's capacity to reframe escalating use as proof of mastery. Taking an honest look at one's own use often means examining not just what we drink, but the private logic we construct to justify it.

Real Life Story

When the body spoke first

For a long time, a man in his thirties had been managing — or believed he was managing. He had a marriage, a social life, a count of days he was quietly proud of. Then a crisis arrived that had nothing to do with drinking, and on the drive away from it, the familiar voice surfaced immediately: tonight is the night to let go. He pulled into a coffee shop instead. He sat with someone he trusted and talked until the urgency passed. It was only later, recounting the evening, that he understood how automatic the impulse had been — how little deliberation it had required. The drinking mind, he realized, had never really gone quiet. It had simply been waiting for the right emergency.

His story illustrates why honest self-assessment isn't a one-time event but an ongoing practice: the pull toward use tends to intensify precisely when emotional defenses are lowest, making clear-eyed self-awareness most difficult — and most necessary — in moments of acute stress.

Real Life Story

The damage that didn't show

A person who had been drinking heavily for years eventually found themselves in a medical setting, not because they had sought help, but because their body had forced the issue. By then, according to what clinicians told them, the internal damage was already advanced — organs quietly failing while the outward life had looked, to most observers, more or less intact. What struck them most in retrospect was how long they had used the absence of visible consequences as evidence that there were no consequences. They had been telling people about events that hadn't happened, misremembering whole stretches of time, and still the thought had not fully landed: something is seriously wrong. The reckoning, when it came, arrived much later than it needed to.

This pattern — using the lack of obvious external collapse as a reason not to look more closely — is one of the central obstacles to honest self-assessment; by the time physical symptoms become undeniable, the window for earlier, less intensive intervention has often already closed.

References (Page Sources meta-box)

Briken, Peer, Bőthe, Beáta, Carvalho, Joana, Coleman, Eli, et al. (2024). Assessment and treatment of compulsive sexual behavior disorder: a sexual medicine perspective.. Sexual medicine reviews. https://doi.org/10.1093/sxmrev/qeae014
Aarseth, Espen, Bean, Anthony M, Boonen, Huub, Colder Carras, Michelle, et al. (2017). Scholars' open debate paper on the World Health Organization ICD-11 Gaming Disorder proposal.. Journal of behavioral addictions. https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.5.2016.088
Ince, Campbell, Antons, Stephanie, Ashton, Sarah, Borgogna, Nicholas C, et al. (2026). Compulsive sexual behavior disorder (CSBD) and problematic pornography use (PPU): A comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and expert-informed narrative review with suggested future directions.. Journal of behavioral addictions. https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.2025.00337
Reid, Rory C, Li, Desiree S, Gilliland, Randy, Stein, Judith A, et al. (2011). Reliability, validity, and psychometric development of the pornography consumption inventory in a sample of hypersexual men.. Journal of sex & marital therapy. https://doi.org/10.1080/0092623x.2011.607047
Abdi, Fatemeh, Pakzad, Reza, Alidost, Farzaneh, Aghapour, Ehsan, et al. (2025). Effect of pornography use on the sexual satisfaction: a systematic review and meta-analysis.. Journal of addictive diseases. https://doi.org/10.1080/10550887.2024.2401680
Chen, Lijun, Jiang, Xiaoliu, Luo, Xiaohui, Kraus, Shane W, et al. (2022). The role of impaired control in screening problematic pornography use: Evidence from cross-sectional and longitudinal studies in a large help-seeking male sample.. Psychology of addictive behaviors : journal of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors. https://doi.org/10.1037/adb0000714
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Okabe, Yushun, Takahashi, Fumito, Ito, Daisuke (2021). Problematic Pornography Use in Japan: A Preliminary Study Among University Students.. Frontiers in psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.638354
Engelhardt, Robin, Geppert, Rahel, Grubbs, Joshua B, von Oertzen, Timo, et al. (2025). Problematic pornography use and psychological distress: A longitudinal study in a large US sample.. Addictive behaviors. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2025.108398
Kor, Ariel, Zilcha-Mano, Sigal, Fogel, Yehuda A, Mikulincer, Mario, et al. (2014). Psychometric development of the Problematic Pornography Use Scale.. Addictive behaviors. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2014.01.027
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Gola, Mateusz, Wordecha, Małgorzata, Sescousse, Guillaume, Lew-Starowicz, Michał, et al. (2017). Can Pornography be Addictive? An fMRI Study of Men Seeking Treatment for Problematic Pornography Use.. Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. https://doi.org/10.1038/npp.2017.78
Prantner, Sabine, Espino-Payá, Alejandro, Pastor, M Carmen, Giménez-García, Cristina, et al. (2024). Magnetoencephalographic correlates of pornography consumption: Associations with indicators of compulsive sexual behaviors.. International journal of clinical and health psychology : IJCHP. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijchp.2024.100524
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Maraz, Aniko, Király, Orsolya, Demetrovics, Zsolt (2015). Commentary on: Are we overpathologizing everyday life? A tenable blueprint for behavioral addiction research. The diagnostic pitfalls of surveys: If you score positive on a test of addiction, you still have a good chance not to be addicted.. Journal of behavioral addictions. https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.4.2015.026
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FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions repeater)

Can you actually be addicted to porn?

Something real happens for people who feel out of control around pornography use — the World Health Organization now recognizes Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder (CSBD) in its global disease classification, with problematic pornography use as its most common form. Whether "addiction" is precisely the right word is still debated among researchers, partly because diagnostic criteria borrowed heavily from substance use models. What's not debated: the distress, loss of control, and real-life consequences people experience are genuine and treatable. The label matters less than whether the pattern is causing harm in your life.

How do I know if my porn use is a problem or just normal?

The clearest signal isn't how often you watch pornography — it's whether you've lost the ability to choose. If you've repeatedly tried to cut back or stop and found it genuinely difficult, if it's causing problems at work, in relationships, or with sleep that you can clearly see but can't seem to stop, or if it's become your primary way of managing stress or difficult emotions, those are the patterns researchers associate with problematic use. Frequency alone doesn't determine whether something is a problem; loss of control and real consequences do.

What does a high score on a porn addiction test mean?

A high score means your responses resemble patterns seen in people who are struggling with problematic pornography use — it's a signal worth taking seriously. It is not a diagnosis. Screening tools are designed to cast a wide net and will produce false positives, especially when shame or moral conflict about pornography is driving the score rather than actual loss of control. Research shows that about a quarter of help-seeking individuals score high due to moral incongruence rather than objective dysregulation. A high score deserves a conversation with a clinician, not a self-verdict.

What's the difference between porn addiction and just watching a lot of porn?

Heavy use and problematic use aren't the same thing. The distinguishing features of problematic pornography use are impaired control (repeated failed attempts to cut back), continued use despite clear negative consequences, and preoccupation that crowds out other things. Someone can watch pornography frequently without experiencing any of those features. Conversely, someone can watch relatively infrequently and still feel genuinely out of control. The pattern — not the volume — is what matters clinically.

What treatment works best for porn addiction?

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is the most studied approach, targeting the thoughts, triggers, and habits that maintain compulsive use. Some therapists combine CBT with acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) or mindfulness-based practices. Early evidence for structured self-guided online programs is encouraging, though dropout rates in studies have been high. Medication (such as naltrexone or SSRIs) is sometimes used alongside therapy, particularly when depression, anxiety, or OCD co-occur. No single gold-standard protocol has been established yet, so finding a clinician experienced in compulsive sexual behavior matters more than finding a specific program.

Can shame about porn use make a test score look worse than it really is?

Yes — and this is one of the most important things to understand about screening results. Research using latent profile analysis in a large help-seeking sample found that roughly a quarter of participants showed high moral incongruence about pornography use but no objective loss of control. In other words, feeling guilty or conflicted about pornography can push a screening score into the "problematic" range even when the use itself isn't clinically disordered. A clinician can help distinguish between genuine dysregulation and distress that's primarily driven by values conflict.

Reviewer panel — not part of the published page

LINT PASS 1 warnings

Anti-AIO component required

Anti-AIO component spec — /porn/test/

Component type

An interactive self-screen based on a validated instrument (PPCS) with honest 'a screen, not a diagnosis' framing and scored interpretation.

Why this is required

The page's anti-AIO structural element. Without it, the page is at risk of being summarized away by AI Overviews. Plain prose without a distinctive interactive or structural element is now a losing format on YMYL SERPs.

Page role

assessment

Reader situation

Someone asking 'do I actually have a problem?' who wants an honest self-check.

Diagrams / instructional visuals needed

Diagrams / instructional visuals needed

For each diagram listed, the dev or illustrator should produce a static visual (or a simple animation) that gets embedded inline in the page body at the suggested location.

1. Problematic use spectrum

What it shows: A visual spectrum from typical use through heavy use to problematic use, with the key distinguishing features (impaired control, negative consequences, salience) marked at the transition point where use becomes clinically concerning.

Suggested location in body: under the H2 "How do you know when porn use has become a problem?"

2. Brain reward circuit and craving

What it shows: A simplified diagram of the brain's reward circuitry — particularly the nucleus accumbens and ventral striatum — illustrating how anticipatory cues trigger heightened activation in people with problematic pornography use, distinguishing craving from simple enjoyment.

Suggested location in body: under the H2 "Why does some people's use spiral out of control?"

3. Screening score interpretation guide

What it shows: A decision-tree style visual showing how to interpret a screening result: high score + loss of control → clinical evaluation; high score + primarily shame/guilt → values-focused therapy conversation; low score + real distress → still worth discussing with a clinician.

Suggested location in body: under the H2 "What do your test results actually mean?"

Cluster routing — sibling pages this should link to

Hero image spec

Hero image spec

Alt text recommendation: A person sitting quietly at a desk, looking thoughtfully at a laptop screen, conveying self-reflection rather than shame.

Tone: warm, human, hopeful — not clinical, not shame-coded, not voyeuristic.

Avoid: stock 'depression poses' (head in hands), bed scenes, beer-glass-and-pills tropes, pixelated faces, only-one-demographic defaults.

Format: JPG, 1200×800 minimum, compressed to ≤200KB.