Create a Wellness Recovery Action Plan
A Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP) can help you identify the challenges you face as the result of a mental health condition, understand your past and present experiences, and specify the recovery that you desire. Most importantly a WRAP can offer structure and provide hope during challenging times in your life. A WRAP is a flexible document that changes and adapts as you do and allows you take personal responsibility for your own wellness.
Before you complete your WRAP, you should create a Wellness Toolbox. This is a list of the things you have done in the past or can try in the future to help you stay well. What tools, strategies and skills do you use to relieve troubling symptoms? These could include yoga, a massage, wearing something that makes you feel good, kayaking, creating a vision board, attending a Peer Support Group, avoiding toxic people, enjoying a favorite food or treat, and/or writing an encouraging or positive message to yourself on the bathroom mirror with a dry erase marker.
Other parts of a WRAP are a Daily Maintenance Plan, which describes what you are like when you are doing well in your recovery; a list of the Minimum Daily Actions you need to take to maintain your recovery; the Triggers (i.e., people, places or activities, etc.) that cause an unpleasant emotional state or worsen your depression or other mental health condition and the Action Steps that will minimize their impact; Early Warning Signals (such as thoughts, feelings or behaviors) which indicate it is time to act and your Planned Response; and the Recovery Management Strategies you can use when you face challenges.
When creating your WRAP, think about the friends and family members who support you in difficult times. If this does not include as many individuals as you hoped, consider ways to develop new friendships or strengthen relationships with your relatives and current friends. Finally, it may be a good idea to draft a Personal Crisis Plan. This should include: (1) What you are like when you are feeling well; (2) Your supporters, including their relationship to you, their contact information and their specific tasks; (3) Signs you need your supporters to take over; (4) Individuals you do not want involved in your care or treatment; (5) Your medications (including their dosage and purpose) and insurance information; (6) Any treatments or therapies you are currently undergoing; (7) Actions that will help and those to avoid; and (8) Indications that your Personal Crisis Plan is no longer needed.
Creating a WRAP can allow you to feel more prepared, increase self-awareness and identify alternative responses that may help you avoid a mental health crisis. #mentalhealthrecovery