Developing Your Post-Crisis Plan

The Post-Crisis Plan is different from other parts of your Wellness Recovery Action Plan in that it is constantly changing as you heal. It is anticipated that two weeks after the crisis you will be feeling much better than you did after one week and therefore your daily activities would be different.

As with the other parts of the Wellness Recovery Action, it is up to you to decide whether or not you want to develop a Post Crisis Plan. If you decide you want to develop a Post-Crisis Plan, it is up to you to decide when you will do it. Like the rest of the plan, the best time to develop your Post-Crisis Plan is probably when you are feeling quite well. Then you will have it if you ever do go into crisis. But again, it is up to you. It would probably be difficult to develop such a plan when you are in crisis or when you are trying to recover. It seems like it would be advantageous to have developed this plan in advance.

If you are hospitalized and you don't have a Post-Crisis Plan, you may want to develop one with your care providers or on your own before you are discharged-a kind of comprehensive discharge plan. While you are in the hospital you may want to ask your care providers to explain any possible discharge conditions and how these conditions would affect your post crisis plan if they were imposed on you.

You may decide to develop your plan when you are working with a group or with your counselor. You could do it with a supportive family member or friend. Others could give you suggestions or advice if you wish, but the final word should be yours. Or you could do it by yourself. It is also up to you to decide whether or not you want to show your Post Crisis Plan to others. It may be a good idea to share your plan with people who you want to assist and support you as you heal.

You may want to sit down one afternoon and spend three or four hours working on your plan until it is finished. Or you may want to take your time-work on it a bit today, and a little more another day.

In developing your Post Crisis Plan, you may find it helpful to refer to your Wellness tools and your lists of what you are like when you are well, your Daily Maintenance Plan and your list of things you might. You also may want to refer back to your Crisis Plan as you make plans to resume activities and take back responsibilities.

The forms for developing a Post Crisis Plan that follows are quite extensive. As with other sections of your Wellness Recovery Action Plan you can skip over sections that don't seem relevant to you or that you would rather address at some other time.

You may choose to use the worksheet at the end of this form to set up recovery timelines. In the first column you would write the task or responsibility you would like to resume, in the second column you would list the steps you would take to resume that task or responsibility and in the third column a possible day or days for accomplishing that step.

You may want to revise your plan after you have used it-especially if certain things weren't as helpful as you thought they would be or plans did not work as you expected.

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