Doctordle Mental Health - identify the condition, one clue at a time.
A clinical reasoning game built around mental health and psychology. Practice reading psychiatric presentations the way they look in real life.
Diagnosing mental health conditions requires the same structured thinking as any branch of medicine - gathering a history, recognising patterns, and narrowing a differential. Doctordle Mental Health gives you a focused, repeatable way to practise that process across 30 curated psychiatry and psychology cases.
How to Play
Read the clinical presentation
Each case opens with a patient - age, presenting complaint, and an initial detail. Form a first impression before the full history is available.
Guess or reveal more
Submit a diagnosis or leave the field blank to unlock the next clue. Each miss adds one more piece of the case, narrowing the differential.
Review the summary
After each case, review a brief explanation of the diagnosis - core mechanism, distinguishing features, and first-line management.
Who this edition is for
Doctordle Mental Health is built for anyone who needs to work with psychiatric and psychological presentations. That includes medical students covering psychiatry rotations, psychology undergraduates and postgraduates learning DSM and ICD criteria, trainee clinical psychologists and counsellors, nursing students preparing for mental health placements, and curious people who want to understand how psychiatric diagnoses are made.
The cases are written in the same format as clinical vignettes used in licensing and board examinations - which means working through them also builds the pattern recognition that translates directly to exam technique.
Doctordle is sometimes described as a Wordle for psychology or a mental health version of a diagnosis game. The mechanics are similar to word puzzles, but the content is built on real clinical cases rather than vocabulary.
Case categories in this edition
| Category | Examples covered |
|---|---|
| Mood disorders | Major depression, bipolar I, dysthymia, cyclothymia, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, adjustment disorder |
| Anxiety disorders | Generalised anxiety, panic disorder, social anxiety, specific phobia, agoraphobia |
| Trauma and stress | PTSD, acute stress disorder |
| Psychotic disorders | Schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, delusional disorder |
| OCD spectrum | OCD, body dysmorphic disorder |
| Personality & eating disorders | Borderline PD, narcissistic PD, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa |
| Neurodevelopmental | ADHD, autism spectrum disorder |
| Other clinical presentations | Dissociative identity disorder, somatic symptom disorder, illness anxiety, insomnia disorder, alcohol use disorder, reactive attachment disorder |
Using Practice Mode for study sessions
Practice Mode removes the streak mechanic and moves directly to the next case after each result. There is no penalty for a miss and no gap between cases, making it the most efficient format for high-volume repetition.
For psychology students preparing for exams, twenty to thirty cases in a single Practice Mode session builds genuine familiarity with how different conditions present - not just what the criteria say, but how they look when a patient walks through the door.
The clue-by-clue format forces active recall rather than passive reading, which makes it more effective than reviewing a textbook list of symptoms. Each correct early guess also trains pattern recognition - the ability to see the diagnosis forming before all the information is available.
Frequently asked questions
What mental health conditions does Doctordle cover?
The mental health edition covers conditions across mood disorders, anxiety disorders, psychotic disorders, personality disorders, eating disorders, neurodevelopmental conditions, dissociative disorders, and somatic symptom disorders - including depression, generalised anxiety, panic disorder, PTSD, OCD, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, ADHD, autism, and more.
Is this useful for psychology students?
Yes. Psychology students learning DSM or ICD diagnostic criteria benefit from working through case vignettes that present symptoms the way they appear clinically rather than as a checklist. Doctordle Mental Health presents real-format cases that match the style used in clinical assessment and licensing exams.
How is Doctordle Mental Health different from the main game?
The main daily game covers general medicine. The mental health edition uses a curated case set focused entirely on psychiatric and psychological presentations - all 30 cases come from mental health and clinical psychology, making it more targeted for students and clinicians in those fields.
Do I need an account to play?
No account or login is required. Open the page and start playing immediately. Your progress and stats are saved locally in your browser.