Scope, method and limits
What Praxical.Psych contains, how it was built, what it deliberately does not do, and where it is likely to be wrong.
What is in it
How the content was written
Each system is presented as its strongest proponents would present it, then criticised as its sharpest opponents would, then given a rejoinder. The aim is that you finish able to argue both sides. Where a claim is contested within the field, it is marked as contested rather than resolved in favour of whichever position the author finds congenial.
Everything is written as original synthesis with citations to primary sources. No copyrighted text is reproduced. Where a published instrument is copyrighted — the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale, the Outcome and Session Rating Scales, the Outcome Questionnaire-45 — it is described rather than reproduced, and you are pointed to its licensed source. Instruments that are genuinely in the public domain — the PHQ-9, GAD-7, PCL-5, AUDIT-C — are reproduced in full and can be scored here.
Every patient, transcript, case and simulated session is a fictional composite written for teaching. Details have been constructed to make specific clinical problems visible. None depicts a real person, and none is a transcript of anything that occurred.
What it does not do
- Provide treatment, or anything that should be mistaken for it.
- Substitute for supervision. The simulator scores your decisions against a model answer; a supervisor notices what you did not know you were doing.
- Give jurisdiction-specific legal advice. Duty-to-protect law, mandated reporter categories, consent ages, privilege and record retention vary enormously, and Praxical.Psych teaches the structure of the reasoning rather than the rule where you practise.
- Cover child and adolescent therapy in depth. The course is adult-focused; the adaptations are noted but the field is its own.
- Replace reading the primary sources. Every claim here is a compression of an argument that someone made at length and better.
- Send anything anywhere. Everything you write stays in this browser.
Where it is likely to be wrong
Three predictable failure modes, stated so you can read against them. First, the evidence summaries are compressions, and every compression makes choices; where an effect size is quoted, treat it as the midpoint of a heterogeneous literature rather than as a constant. Second, the field moves — particularly in the psychedelic and digital sections, where regulatory positions change faster than any static resource can track. Verify anything that bears on a decision.
Third and most importantly: the evidence base being summarised here is overwhelmingly drawn from Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic populations, which are a small minority of humanity and outliers on many of the dimensions that matter. That is a validity problem at the centre of the science rather than a diversity problem appended to it, and it limits every generalisation in this app.
Principal sources
Prochaska, J. O., Norcross, J. C., & Prochaska, J. (2024). Systems of Psychotherapy: A Transtheoretical Analysis (10th ed.). Oxford University Press.
The comparative framework this app’s system pages are organised around.
Wampold, B. E., & Imel, Z. E. (2015). The Great Psychotherapy Debate (2nd ed.). Routledge.
The contextual model, and the strongest statement of the common-factors position.
Norcross, J. C., & Lambert, M. J. (Eds.) (2019). Psychotherapy Relationships That Work (3rd ed., 2 vols.). Oxford University Press.
The quantified evidence on relationship elements and on adapting to the person.
Barkham, M., Lutz, W., & Castonguay, L. G. (Eds.) (2021). Bergin and Garfield’s Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change (7th ed.). Wiley.
The field’s reference work on outcome and process research.
McWilliams, N. (2011). Psychoanalytic Diagnosis (2nd ed.). Guilford.
The best single book on thinking structurally about people.
Yalom, I. D., & Leszcz, M. (2020). The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy (6th ed.). Basic Books.
Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT Skills Training Manual (2nd ed.). Guilford.
Abramowitz, J. S., Deacon, B. J., & Whiteside, S. P. H. (2019). Exposure Therapy for Anxiety (2nd ed.). Guilford.
Unusually honest about how often clinicians dilute the treatment.
Hays, P. A. (2022). Addressing Cultural Complexities in Counseling and Clinical Practice (4th ed.). APA.
Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery. Basic Books.
Every system, topic and form page carries its own citations. Where a claim is contested, the citation is to the primary source so that you can read it and disagree with this app.
If you are struggling yourself
Privacy
Praxical.Psych has no server, no account and no analytics. Everything you type is stored in this browser’s local storage and is never transmitted. That also means it is not backed up, not encrypted at rest beyond whatever your device provides, and not a compliant clinical record system. Do not enter real patient information, and export from Progress if your work matters to you.
Copyright
Praxical.Psych is © 2026 Moonlit Social Labs. All rights reserved. The text, case material, session scripts, forms, content model and code are original work written for this application. Facts, findings and theoretical ideas belong to the researchers and clinicians who produced them and are cited throughout. Copyrighted instruments are described rather than reproduced. See the full disclaimer for what this is and is not.