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In general, mental health outcomes improve when people are proactive about achieving and maintaining wellness.
What you* can do:
Become knowledgeable about your condition
The better informed you become about your condition, the more active a role you can play in treatment and daily life decisions. Learn to anticipate the situations and activities that tend to improve your condition, and avoid activities and situations that tend to worsen your condition.
You can also learn to recognize the signs of how you’re feeling and doing, which will alert you to the need to make treatment changes. There are many sources of mental health information—the most reliable and authoritative web sites are typically run by university-affiliated hospitals, federal agencies such as the National Institute of Mental Health, and national advocacy organizations, such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
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Talk with others who have successfully managed living with this condition
It’s a comfort to know you are not alone. By talking with others you might find some surprising things in common about your experiences. You might hear about community services and care providers that you didn’t know about, or learn about different treatment approaches and their benefits and drawbacks. There are many types of support groups and group therapies for individuals with mental health conditions and for their loved ones. Many are geared to specific persons in the individual’s life—for example, support groups for parents of adult children with autism. You can also find web sites designed for communicating online with people sharing the same mental health condition.
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Build a support network for yourself and your family
Try to surround yourself with people who are positive and appreciative—and minimize exposure to people and situations that tend to make you feel discouraged. Whether or not the people in your support network are aware of the mental health difficulties you are experiencing, make sure that you choose people you can count on to make you feel good about yourself: selected family members, a spouse or significant other, close friends, teachers, or colleagues. You may wish to find ways to see people in your support network regularly, by inviting them to sign up with you for an exercise class or a series of concerts, for example.
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Learn how to communicate effectively with your doctors, therapists, and other members of your support network
To assist in the exchange of useful information during scheduled appointments, your care providers may suggest that you record some data and observations between visits about symptoms, responses to treatment, and factors in your home, work or school environment. You may be asked to track the number of hours you sleep each night or the number of times each week that a particular mood or behavior occurs. In some cases it may make sense for members of your support network to track certain behaviors on your behalf. To help ensure that all members of your support network understand their role in your treatment and recovery, you may wish to bring members of your support network to meet with one of your care providers.
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Develop a plan for your care
Optimal treatment for most mental health conditions includes not only medication and/or therapeutic counseling, but lifestyle adjustments. Your wellness plan should include a stabilizing regimen of lifestyle factors, such as nutritious diet, adequate sleep, and regular exercise, all of which can have a major impact on mental and physical health. In addition, the plan should designate people in your support system who have your permission to take action on your behalf under previously agreed-upon circumstances. Such an action might be to remind you about your medication schedule, alert you to warning signs of possible relapse, or, in some cases, to contact your treatment team directly.
Involving others is important since there may be times when it is hard for you to recognize the signs that your condition has changed. For example, if you develop an excessive sleeping pattern that is characteristic of worsening depression, you may be too affected by the depression to notice even a significant change in your sleep. In such a case you might have outlined in your plan that you want a family member to contact your care providers. Revise your plan as needed to get better results.
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* On this page, “you” and “your” are used to refer to either you or someone you care about.
This page is adapted from Michael Otto, PhD, Noreen Reilly-Harrington, PhD, Gary Sachs, MD, and Robert Knauz, PhD, “Collaborative Care Workbook,” produced by Massachusetts General Hospital for the Systematic Treatment Enhancement Program for Bipolar Disorder (STEP-BD), January 2004.
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