Legal
MyFreud Ethical Guideline
This guideline sets out the ethical standards MEDRIX LTD (Company No. 16211156) (“MyFreud”, “we”, “our”, or “us”) holds itself to when handling psychological and behavioural information. It applies the principles of the Code of Ethics published by the Neuromarketing Science & Business Association (NMSBA) to a mental wellbeing service, and it sits alongside our Privacy Policy rather than replacing it.
1. What this is, and what it is not
This is a voluntary commitment. It is not a claim of NMSBA membership, certification, accreditation, audit or endorsement, and no such relationship should be inferred from this page. The NMSBA does not review, approve or supervise our work.
We adopt the code because its subject matter is ours. It governs the practice of drawing inferences about people’s inner states from the data they generate, and then doing something commercial with the result. That is a fair description of a wellbeing app, whatever sector the code was written for.
2. Why this exists alongside the Privacy Policy
Our Privacy Policy answers the legal question: what we collect, on what lawful basis, how long we keep it, and what rights you have under UK GDPR. It is written to satisfy a regulator, and it should be read for the detail.
This page answers a different question, which is what we will not do even where the law permits it. Consent can be legally valid and still uninformed. An inference can be lawful and still be one we should not draw. A finding can be publishable and still be reported in a way that misleads. This document exists to cover that gap.
3. Integrity
We do not use psychological insight to work against the interests of the person it came from. In practice that means we do not design features whose purpose is to extend engagement past the point of benefit, and we do not treat time spent in the app as a measure of whether it is helping. A wellbeing product that succeeds by being difficult to put down has stopped being a wellbeing product.
4. Credibility
We do not claim clinical outcomes we cannot evidence. MyFreud is not a diagnostic service, not a substitute for professional care, and not a treatment. Where our editorial content describes research, our editorial policy governs how the claim is made and how confident it is entitled to sound.
We also do not claim capabilities that current science does not support. No technology available to us reads minds, detects lies, or determines what somebody truly feels beneath what they report. Anyone marketing such a thing is overstating it, and we will not.
5. Transparency
Where we draw an inference about you, we will say so in language you can follow before you rely on it. If a feature estimates something, we describe it as an estimate. If a score is produced by a model rather than a clinician, that is stated at the point the score appears rather than in a document you would have to go looking for.
6. Informed consent
Consent is only meaningful if the person giving it understands what they are agreeing to. Where we ask for consent, we will describe the purpose in plain language, keep it separable from other permissions rather than bundling it, and make declining a genuine option that does not degrade the parts of the service the consent was not needed for.
7. Privacy
Psychological information deserves stricter handling than ordinary account data, and we treat it that way. The full legal detail of what we collect, our lawful bases, retention periods, international transfers and your statutory rights is in the Privacy Policy, which is the authoritative document. Nothing on this page reduces those rights.
One commitment is worth stating here because it goes beyond what the law requires: material you write for yourself, such as journal entries, is yours. We do not treat it as a source of insight to be sold on.
8. The right to withdraw
You may withdraw consent at any time, and withdrawing must be as easy as giving it was. Withdrawal applies going forward and does not require you to justify it. Where you ask us to delete personal information, the process and its limits are set out in the Privacy Policy.
9. Children and vulnerable people
MyFreud is intended for adults. Our position on children and young people is set out in the Privacy Policy and is not relaxed by anything here.
More broadly, somebody using a mental wellbeing service may be having the worst week of their life, and that is the condition we design for rather than the exception. Anything that would be merely irritating to a well user can be genuinely harmful to a distressed one, which is why the duty of care below is a design constraint rather than a sentiment.
10. Duty of care
We accept a duty of care to people in distress, and one consequence of it is visible across this site. We do not publish crisis helpline numbers in our articles. The site is read from everywhere, and a confidently written instruction to call a number that does not answer in the reader’s country is worse than no number at all. What we publish instead is country-neutral: contact your local emergency services or a crisis helpline.
A second consequence is that we suppress promotional prompts where they would be inappropriate. Somebody who has just told a screener that they have had thoughts of harming themselves is not shown an invitation to join a community.
11. How findings are reported
Where we publish research, whether our own or other people’s, we report what the study actually established rather than the most striking reading of it, including its limitations and the size of its effect. Our editorial policy covers this in more detail, including corrections and how our content is produced.
12. Raising a concern
If you believe we have fallen short of anything on this page, tell us through our contact page. Complaints relating to data protection specifically, including your right to complain to a supervisory authority, are covered in the Privacy Policy.
13. Changes to this guideline
We may update this guideline. Where we do, we will change the effective date at the top of this page.