The WRAP (Wellness and Recovery Action Plan) began with Mary Ellen Copeland back in 1997. It was developed as a means for people with mental health problems to plan, measure, evaluate and adjust their lifestyles in order to achieve increasing wellness. It’s a mental health wellness system that’s exploded across the globe in just over a decade, but it makes too much sense to be just another fad.
For those who use WRAP, it takes some initial effort to develop a basis to work from, and then becomes an ongoing life process. On one hand, the idea is to identify the forms of behaviour that make you well, and to try to promote them in your life through a daily plan. On the other hand, it’s used to identify signs that things may be going wrong with your mental health, and to plan for when this happens. It’s like a safety net, alarm system and escape plan all in one, and how eminently sensible is that?
Whenever you start a new job, particularly in larger buildings, you’ve hardly taken you’re coat off when one of the first things they tell you is how to get the hell out if the place should it suddenly start burning to the ground or some such. Maybe it’s surprising that we don’t take this as a bit of a bad sign and scarper there and then.
In fact, we’re grateful of knowing what to do should crisis come. Some might grumble at health and safety gone mad at every fire drill, but for most it’s immensely preferable to stumbling around in chaos, in the dark, blind with panic and pain after you’ve stubbed your toe and screaming, “Where’s the bloody light-switch? Does anyone have a plaster? Oh and which way is out?!”
Fortunately, evacuation is not something that’s worked out whilst the building’s actually on fire. Quite the opposite, it’s imperative that in the calm of a very unexciting office, sensible people with thoughtful demeanours calculate in careful detail how to get as many people out of a building in crisis as quickly and safely as possible. Computer reconstructions are worked through, apertures measured, exits placed, signs designed and people are trained precisely when there is no disaster, so that should a disaster happen, there is a plan.
The sad thing is, mental health crisis happens to far more people than ever get caught in burning buildings, it can be just as tragic, but is routinely ignored. Make no mistake, mental breakdown is a crisis, and it’s severe. Its effects can be catastrophic, not just for the person suffering, but for those around them. It can bring chaos, alarm, and distress as traumatic as any physical human experience. Don’t underestimate how serious mental breakdown can be. In every newspaper, every day, all across the world, we see that in the worst of cases, its effects can be as sadly fatal as any house fire.
The WRAP programme addresses this, on a personal, unique basis. It offers an effective way to single out and effectively promote healthy behaviour in your life, and to put in place steps that will help to ensure that, should crisis come, there’s a plan to follow to hopefully mitigate, even head off the worst. I’m now four weeks in to my current eight week programme, but if I need to take another group, I will – the point is to keep doing it. And anyway, I’m looking forward to the day that a fire drill comes in the middle of a WRAP group.
Tags: WRAP