Mental Health Maintenance Plan
Write a one-page mental health maintenance plan: the daily basics that keep you well, your personal warning signs, your go-to supports, and the early actions you'll take when the signs appear.
Maintenance beats repair
You do not wait for a car to break down before changing the oil. Mental health works the same way: the habits, people, and early moves that keep you steady cost far less than the repairs after a crash - but only if they are set up in advance. The best time to write a plan like this is when you are doing reasonably well, because that is when your judgment is clearest. Future you, in the middle of a hard month, gets to borrow it.
How this plan works
A maintenance plan has four parts: the daily basics that keep you well, the warning signs that you are starting to slip, the supports you can lean on, and the early actions you will take when the signs appear. None of the parts are complicated - the power is in having them written down before you need them. Keep the finished plan somewhere you will actually see it, and revisit it monthly. It is a living document; as your life changes, it should too.
Take a baseline reading
Before you build the plan, rate how well-maintained your mental health feels right now.
Your daily basics
Check the basics that genuinely keep you steady - not the ones you think should matter, but the ones that actually do.
Name your keystone basic
One basic usually props up all the others - when it slips, everything else follows. Which one is it for you?
Your early warning signs
What does the start of a slide look like for you, before it is obvious to anyone else? Think small: changes in sleep, canceled plans, a shorter fuse, skipped meals, more scrolling, less answering.
Your go-to supports
List the people and resources you can lean on, and what each one is good for - the friend who distracts you, the one who listens, the family member who shows up, your therapist or doctor, a line you can call.
Your early-action plan
Decide now what you will do when two or more warning signs hang around for more than a few days. Write it as if-then instructions that a tired, low version of you can follow without thinking.
Set your check-in and reflect
Pick a monthly date to reread and update this plan, then close with a quick reflection.
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