A safety plan is designed to guide you through a crisis. As you continue through the steps, you can get help and feel safer. Keep your plan easily accessible in case you have thoughts of hurting yourself.
- Recognize your personal warning signs: What thoughts, images, moods, situations, and behaviors indicate to you that a crisis may be developing? Write these down in your own words.
- Use your own coping strategies: List things that you can do on your own to help you not act on urges to harm yourself.
- Socialize with others who may offer support as well as distraction from the crisis: List people and social settings that may help take your mind off of difficult thoughts or feelings.
- Contact family members or friends who may help to resolve a crisis: Make a list of people who are supportive and who you feel you can talk to when under stress.
- Contact mental health professionals or agencies: Make a list of names, numbers and/or locations of clinicians, local emergency rooms, and crisis hotlines. Put the Lifeline number, 1-800-273-8255, into your phone.
- Ensure your environment is safe: Have you thought of ways in which you might harm yourself? Work with a counselor to develop a plan to limit your access to these means.
To download a Patient Safety Plan Template, please click here.
To download the MY3 app, please click here.