It's become an unfortunate fact in my life that mental health emergencies happen. Sometimes that means I need to make a quick getaway and go home to lock myself in my room until I can breathe again. Other times, though, that means I need to be hospitalized for a short time to keep myself safe. This is a simple reality of being bipolar, especially when your body chemistry doesn't respond very well to medications.
One thing that I've found to be a major help during a mental health emergency, whether big or small, is to have a crisis plan in place beforehand. This means it needs to be prepared before the emergency happens, when I'm stable and not in crisis-mode. Other than the initial preparation and checking it every few months to make sure it's up-to-date, it's pretty easy to forget about...until a crisis happens and I'm running around like in that episode of Spongebob when he throws out all of the information in his brain except what he needs to be a waiter. (Please tell me someone else remembers that?)
What should a crisis plan include?
For a crisis plan to be effective, it should at a minimum include the following:
Signs you're going into a crisis
Specific people you want to help support you or make decisions for you
Specific people you do not want to help support you or make decisions for you
Current medications you're on and their and dosages
Contact information for your medical and/or mental health doctors and therapist
Suicide or crisis hotline numbers, both national and local
Crisis plans can include more than that, though. In my crisis plans, I personally like to include these:
Bills that need to be paid and instructions for how to do so (login or company information) in case you're hospitalized
Pets or plants that need to be taken care of and instructions for how to do so (children are an entirely different matter and are too big of an issue to be covered in a simple crisis plan!)
things that can help when I'm in distress
things I know will make me feel worse (like triggers)
a list of things worth living for (including the small things, like that first cup of coffee in the morning)
Be Prepared
Being prepared for a mental health crisis is one of the most important things you can do when you have a mental illness. To help you with this, I've made a 5 page crisis plan that you can fill out and put up. Hopefully you'll never need it! But in the event that you do, you'll be prepared. Click below to download!
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