Press

Press.

Bios, credentials, speaking topics, headshots, coverage, and how to get in touch.

Short bio (50 words)

Shariq Refai, MD, MBA is a board-certified psychiatrist, founder of the multistate telepsychiatry practice shrinkMD, founder of the educational program shrinQ, and the medical editor behind The Shrink Network. He's the author of three books on overthinking, anxiety, and the patterns that shape modern life.

Medium bio (120 words)

Shariq Refai, MD, MBA is a board-certified psychiatrist with dual board certification in psychiatry and in sports and performance psychiatry. He founded shrinkMD, a multistate telepsychiatry practice, and created the educational program shrinQ. He's the medical editor for Shrinkopedia, AnxietyResource, DepressionResource, AnxietyResearch, and PsychiatryRx, and the author of three books on overthinking, anxiety, and the patterns that quietly run modern lives. His clinical work has included affiliations involving the NFL Substance Abuse Program and the Jacksonville Jaguars. He's a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a member of the Forbes Business Council. He writes from Jacksonville, Florida.

Long bio (250 words)

Shariq Refai, MD, MBA is a board-certified psychiatrist with dual board certification in psychiatry and in sports and performance psychiatry, and more than fifteen years in clinical practice. He founded shrinkMD, an independent multistate telepsychiatry practice, to make psychiatric care easier to access. He created the educational program shrinQ as a structured way for adults to work with overthinking, rumination, and anxiety loops between or instead of clinical visits.

He serves as medical editor for the editorial publications in The Shrink Network: Shrinkopedia, the clinically reviewed mental health encyclopedia; AnxietyResource and DepressionResource, the practical condition-specific education sites; AnxietyResearch, the editorial research and data layer; and PsychiatryRx, the plain-language psychiatric medication reference. He's also the founder of the wellness apps Unstuck and QuitScrolling.

His professional background includes affiliations involving the NFL Substance Abuse Program and the Jacksonville Jaguars. He's a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association (FAPA) and a member of the Forbes Business Council. He holds an MD and an MBA.

He's the author of three books, including Your Mind Is Full of Sh*t: A Psychiatrist's Guide to Understanding Overthinking, Anxiety, and the Lies in Your Head; its companion Workbook; and The Havoc in Your Head: A Psychiatrist's Reset for Anxiety, Overthinking, Panic, and the Thoughts That Won't Let Go.

He lives in Jacksonville, Florida.

Credentials

  • Board certification: Psychiatry (American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology). Sports and performance psychiatry.
  • Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association (FAPA).
  • MD, MBA.
  • NPI: 1467680660.
  • ORCID: 0009-0009-1090-4373.
  • Wikidata: Q139822307.
  • Forbes Business Council member.

Speaking topics

I speak on the following topics regularly:

  • Why overthinking doesn't yield to insight, and what does work.
  • The four-move pattern (Pattern, Pause, Reframe, Act) for working with anxiety loops.
  • The high-performer pattern: why the people who look most put together are often quietly burning out.
  • Modern psychiatry: what the field actually does, what gets it wrong, and where it's heading.
  • Telepsychiatry and access: how the math works, where it doesn't, and what's at stake.
  • The Shrink Network: how a coordinated mental health ecosystem actually gets built.
  • Sports and performance psychiatry: anxiety, focus, and the athletes who carry it.

Media topics

I'm available for interviews on anxiety, panic, OCD-spectrum conditions, overthinking, the high-performer pattern, modern psychiatry, telepsychiatry, evidence-based mental health, the limits of popular mental health commentary, mental health literacy, sports and performance psychiatry, and the ethics and clinical realities of digital mental health.

Quotes I'm comfortable being attributed to

These are short positions I'll stand behind in print:

Overthinking isn't a lack of insight. The articles you've read are accurate. The advice you've gotten is reasonable. The reason it hasn't worked is that overthinking has a pattern, and patterns don't yield to information. They yield to structure.
The wellness vocabulary is welcoming but vague. The clinical vocabulary is precise but unwelcoming. The job is to write in the space in between, accurately, in language a real person can use.
Telepsychiatry isn't a workaround. For most adult outpatient psychiatric conditions, it's clinically equivalent to in-person care, and it makes the math work for patients who couldn't otherwise get to a clinic.
There are no testimonials on this page yet. shrinQ is new, and inventing them isn't something I'll do. What's real is the method, the books behind it, and the psychiatrist who wrote them.

Featured coverage

Press contact

Email: media@shariqrefai.com

Contact form: /contact with "Media & Press" selected.

Headshots and assets

Downloadable assets for editorial use:

Continue
Read the founder narrative
See the project list
Book speaking
See the books