A Crisis Management Plan (CMP) should be completed by your loved one. They can complete it independently, or if they need support it can be done with a caregiver, therapist or someone that they trust to provide support. The critical piece is that the individual who is the subject of the CMP needs to be involved in developing it in order to enhance the effectiveness of the plan.
The goal of a crisis management plan is to create an outline of the steps that can be taken to help de-escalate the situation and provide support when your loved one is not in the proper frame of mind and is unable to help themselves. This requires a certain amount of self-awareness and self-understanding on the part of your loved one because the plan is tailored to their specific needs.
A well developed CMP should include the following sections:
- Key supports: Who can help them in a moment of crisis? This could be friends, family members, an emotional support animal, therapist, or perhaps someone not in their circle of mental health care, but who’s company they enjoy
- Tiggers: Are there things that can cause a crisis, or make an existing crisis worse? For example, relationship tensions, financial trouble, confinement, memories or reminders of past traumas, etc.
- Crisis Patterns: Categorized as physical, cognitive, emotional and behavioural
- Physical: achiness, stress headaches, stomach issues
- Cognitive: memory issues, stuck in negative thoughts, paranoia, not able to think clearly or rationally
- Emotional: withdrawn, depressed, crying, increased frustration/anger
- Behaviour: changes in sleeping habits or eating, hygiene
- Coping Strategies: These are activities that have helped in the past, usually under the themes of self soothing, relaxation or distraction.
- De-escalation Techniques: Suggestions of things that you, or responders can do that will help to take the edge off a situation and improve it rather than having it get progressively worse.
- Special Arrangements: Preparations for anything that may require attention if your loved one needs to leave the house or be admitted to hospital.
- Do’s and Don’ts: These are suggestions of things that others can say or do, or avoid saying or doing to either calm the situation or avoid making things worse.
- Anything else that people should know that isn’t in the plan