Editors & Contributors
Every book we publish carries fifty accounts of someone's hardest months. It matters that readers know exactly who assembled them, what was changed, and what was not. This page names the people behind the press and describes how the work is done.
Shashank Bhosale — Founder and Editor
Healing Stories Network is founded, edited and published by Shashank Bhosale. He is an engineer by training and is not a clinician; nothing on this site is written or presented as clinical expertise, and readers should treat it accordingly.
The press began with his own diagnoses — a series of gastrointestinal conditions, and the mental-health difficulties that followed them. What he wanted at the time, and could not find, was a long, honest account by someone who had already been where he was, including the parts that did not resolve neatly. Clinical pages described the condition without describing the life. Forum threads were fragmentary and hard to trust. So he began collecting the accounts himself.
He personally solicits and corresponds with contributors, selects which accounts go into which volume, and does the line editing. He does not write in a contributor's voice, does not merge several people into one narrator, and does not add outcomes that a contributor did not describe.
Contact: support@healingstoriesnetwork.com
Contributing writers on health information
The short topic introduction that opens each volume, and any general health-information passage elsewhere on this site, is written and checked by healthcare professionals who contribute anonymously. They ask not to be named because they write outside their institutions and do not wish their employers implicated in a commercial project. We would rather tell you that plainly than imply a level of authority we cannot evidence.
What this means in practice: introductions are checked for factual accuracy and for language that could be mistaken for guidance. They are deliberately brief. They exist to frame the testimonies, not to instruct. No part of any volume, introduction included, is a substitute for the judgement of a clinician who knows your case.
The contributors themselves
The people whose accounts fill these books are the actual authorities in them. Each testimony is by one real, single contributor who volunteered it, wrote or dictated it themselves, and approved the final text before publication. Contributors choose how they are credited, including anonymously, and can withdraw before a volume goes to press. Identifying details — hospitals, clinicians, family members — are handled with care and are removed or blurred where a contributor asks.
Editing is limited to clarity, grammar and length. We do not smooth an account into a recovery arc, and every volume carries a section given over to outcomes that were partial, disappointing or unresolved. A collection where everyone gets better would be a worse book and a dishonest one.
What we are still missing
We do not currently have a named clinical reviewer of record. We think readers should know that, rather than discover it. When that changes, this page will name the reviewer, their registration and their scope, and every page they have reviewed will carry their byline and the date of review.
Corrections
If you find an error of fact anywhere on this site or in a volume you have bought, write to support@healingstoriesnetwork.com and tell us where it is. We correct errors in the digital files and reissue them to everyone who has bought that title, at no cost. Corrections to health-information passages are treated as urgent.
Read further
Editorial Standards sets out the sourcing, consent and editing rules in full. The Masthead describes why the press exists. The Medical Disclaimer states the limits of everything published here. Share Your Story explains how to contribute an account of your own.