Wellness Recovery Action Planning (WRAP)
WRAP is a 'self-management' tool used in many countries around the world to help individuals take more control over their own wellbeing and recovery. It emphasizes that people are the experts in their own experience and is based on the premise there are no limits to recovery.
The tool was designed by
Mary Ellen Copeland and others to offer a structured means by which people could maintain wellness and recovery while working to anticipate and reflect on crisis.
Within a group setting, individuals explore self-help tools (eg. peer counseling, focusing exercises, relaxation & stress reduction techniques) and resources for keeping themselves well and for helping themselves feel better in difficult times.
In developing your own Wellness Recovery Action Plan, you’ll identify the wellness tools that will most benefit you and will learn how to use these tools when needed, every day or when you have particular feelings or experiences.
Your plan will help you monitor and relieve uncomfortable and distressing feelings and behaviors and identify your best course of action. This planning also includes Crisis Planning (an Advance Directive) that lets others know how you want them to respond when you cannot make decisions, take care of yourself, or keep yourself safe, and a Post Crisis plan to guide you through the often difficult time when you are healing from a crisis.
Core Principles of WRAP
- That recovery is possible (‘hope’)
- That individuals should take personal responsibility for their own lives and well being (‘personal responsibility’)
- That it is important to know yourself, to be self aware (‘education’)
- That it is important to believe in and advocate for oneself (‘self advocacy’)
- That the support of others is vital (‘support’)
Core Components of WRAP
People work within these principles to create their own WRAP. Each plan should include the following components:
- Identification of triggers and associated action plan
- Identification of early warning signs and associated action plan
- Identification of signs that things are breaking down and associated action plan
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