Crisis Planning

Is Planning for a Crisis, Planning to Fail?

In a person-centered planning/self-determination workshop in 1998 the question was asked, “If we plan for a crisis, doesn’t that mean we are planning to fail?”

No one wants to plan for being a failure.

Here’s what the thoughts were:

Not if the crisis plan is positive and makes one more comfortable-

If someone is able to live with less stress because one is no longer waiting for a big, ugly, undefined crisis to come crashing out of a dark corner down onto one’s head.

If crisis plans are preventive and comprehensive, that also is not planning to fail.

For example: if a crisis plan also includes, “If this happens or I feel this way, I will:

a.)______________ or

b.)______________.”

When crisis plans are done that way, one has found an answer, which means that the person has more control over his/her life.

In many ways, crisis plans are about power. Each person makes the decision about what they want or need to have happen. In a crisis plan each person is saying:

This is what I want to have happen

This is what I don’t want to have happen.

Some crisis plans are all about what will happen, if you end up in a hospital.

I want a single room.

I don’t want to go to X hospital.

I would like this person (Alice) to take care of my animals.

This person (David) will call and stop my newspaper delivery.

Advanced Directives

Mental health advanced directives are also called psychiatric advanced directives.

Psychiatric advanced directives can cover some of what is covered in crisis plans, but doesn’t cover everything that might be in a crisis plan.

Crisis Plans can be done in a group (such as in a Wellness Recovery Action Plan [WRAP]) or in a Pathways to Recovery Group. 

Some crisis plans are comprehensive enough to cover things that go wrong or cause smaller problems that people know or think will lead to a crisis, if they happen. This type of plan is more preventive and places people more in control of their own lives.

When things get turned around, when things go a little bit sideways or wrong, (for example- if you slide off into a ditch and apply the brakes while on your recovery journey and don’t keep going with a lead foot on the accelerator across a field, through a fence and then over a cliff) then things have worked out well. Decisions that were made and written down in your crisis plan helped you keep more power and control. You didn’t have to wait for the rescue team to haul you back up the cliff.

In that crisis plan:

We chose what to do

We chose why we wanted to do it that way

We chose who we wanted to call on or do something with

If you made the decisions, that is informed choice and when you make your own decisions, you are in control.

Changing your direction is powerful. This is what a crisis plan can help us do.