Guest Post by Hayden Finch, PhD
I’m honored and excited to feature a guest post by Hayden Finch, PhD. Dr. Finch is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in treating severe and persistent mental illnesses. She is passionate about helping people recover from mental health conditions so they can lead purposeful, meaningful lives. Outside of the therapy room, she loves dogs, math, and travel. Connect with Dr. Finch via her blog, X (formerly Twitter), or Instagram.
For most people, mental health symptoms come and go – sometimes the symptoms might be absent or mild, and other times they might be severe enough to require hospitalization.
Relapses are those periods when the symptoms are more severe, cause more distress, or make it harder to function. We don’t know the entire story about what causes relapses, but we do know most folks are at greater risk for a relapse if they’re under a lot of stress, if they stopped doing the things that keep them healthy, and if they’re using alcohol or other drugs.
Developing a relapse prevention plan significantly reduces how many times a person experiences relapses. A relapse prevention plan is a written document that outlines what makes you uniquely vulnerable to relapse. It’s based specifically on what tends to be associated with your particular mental health experience, and it has 5 components:
1. Triggers
The first part of a relapse prevention plan is a list of specific events or situations in your life that have triggered past relapses and that might also trigger future relapses. There are tons of things that can trigger relapses, like physical health problems, insomnia, substance use, financial difficulties, problems in your relationships, isolation, problems or stress at work, unemployment, changes in housing, or not sticking with the things that keep you mentally well.
2. Early warning signs
Often those triggers are really consuming, and that can mean you focus so heavily on the trigger that you stop taking care of yourself the way you normally would. At that point, you might notice some early warning signs that you’re starting to relapse.
To recognize those signs, you’ll need to know what your symptoms are like, which are different than anyone else’s. Early warning signs are usually very subtle changes in how you feel or act – they might be really hard to notice, so take a look back on your experience and see if you can detect any in retrospect.
Early warning signs might be things like changes in sleep or appetite, feeling more emotional, difficulty getting along with people, isolating yourself, changes in how you’re thinking, problems focusing or concentrating, having trouble getting things done at home/work/school, using drugs, drinking more, or disengaging from the activities that keep you well. In addition to some of these common early warning signs, you might also have some really unique warning signs, so try to see if you can find those.
3. Action steps
The next part of a relapse prevention plan is a list of things you can do to avoid or manage triggers or react to early warning signs. Here are some ideas about actions you could take:
- Learn as much as possible about your mental health condition. The more educated you are about your mental illness, the more empowered you’ll be to participate actively in your treatment and recovery.
- Review your triggers and consider how you might handle similar situations differently if they happened again. For example, if you know stress is one of your triggers (it most likely is – it’s one of the biggest known triggers for relapse), then you might start to learn what it feels like when you’re stressed and plan to use deep breathing or progressive muscle relaxation exercises to reduce stress.
- To that end, even if stress wasn’t on your list of triggers, just go ahead and reduce stress by whatever means necessary if you notice early warning signs. Stress tends to exacerbate mental health symptoms, which means those early warning signs will just get worse if you remain stressed.
- Participate in treatments that help you recover. There are lots of treatment approaches out there. Find out what works for you. This might include medication, relaxation exercises, individual therapy, etc.
- Build social supports, which could include friends or family, support groups, or folks with the same hobbies. Loved ones can sometimes notice early warning signs before you even do, so they can help you get on track with addressing those warning signs and preventing relapse. They can also reduce stress in general by providing support.
- Use medication effectively. Work closely with your prescriber to find the right meds or discontinue meds.
- Schedule an appointment with your treatment team to see if you need to make any changes to your treatment plan – adjust your medications, start a new support group, reduce work hours, etc.
4. People who can help you
Friends and family can sometimes think of triggers or early warning signs or tips you might not have considered, and they can be on the lookout for early warning signs to help you prevent relapses or minimize how severe they are. For example, while you might be the first person to notice things like unwanted thoughts, insomnia, or anxiety, your friends and family might more easily detect that you’re spending more time alone or not seeming as “with it.” So, make a list of people who could help you and what you’d like for them to do if they notice early warning signs.
5. Emergency contacts
The final step of the relapse prevention plan is a list of your emergency contacts. Because sometimes stuff gets real and you gotta call the professionals in. This could be your providers’ emergency lines, your local emergency room, your local crisis center, a respite facility, or the national crisis lines.
As I mentioned at the beginning, we want to try to eliminate the most debilitating symptoms because that makes a huge difference in quality of life. While we might not be able to eliminate them altogether for some people, we can reduce relapses and mental health disability with a solid relapse prevention plan. Start with these tips and then work with your healthcare providers to solidify the plan.
Thanks so much to Dr. Hayden Finch for sharing these important tips and insights. Here’s a question: What has been helpful for you in preventing mental health relapses? Please leave a comment. Also, please subscribe to my blog and feel free to follow me on X (formerly Twitter) or Instagram, “like” my Facebook page, or connect on LinkedIn. Finally, if you enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend. Thanks!