WRAP was a turning point in my life. It helps to soften my rough edges and stay on track. Before WRAP I was living a life often teetering on crisis.
WRAP works! It has been developed by a group of people who experience mental health difficulties. These people learned that they can identify what makes them well and then use their own wellness tools to relieve difficult feelings and maintain wellness. The result has been recovery and long-term stability. Your WRAP program is designed by you in practical, day-to-day terms and holds the key to getting and staying well. It does not necessarily replace traditional treatments and can be used as a compliment to any other treatment options you have chosen.
In developing your own WRAP, 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. WRAP will help you monitor and relieve uncomfortable and distressing feelings and behaviors and identify your best course of action. WRAP 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.
WRAP is developed by you. However, you may choose to have selected supporters and health care providers assist and support you as you work on your own plan.
WRAP has a broad applicability. While it was developed by people who have experienced mental health difficulties, it is easily adapted for other uses and has been found to work well for people who have other medical conditions and life issues and as a framework to guide interpersonal relationships, peer support, groups, agencies, and organizations.
Key elements of WRAP:
WRAP is designed and managed by you and is designed to:
People who are using WRAP say:
I have never met anyone doing such extensive research and grassroots work with such disparate stakeholders and getting such remarkable results as Mary Ellen Copeland through her development of a grassroots approach to recovery called the Wellness Recovery Action Plan. WRAP has given people a vocabulary of recovery and has awakened people to their own expertise. Outcomes have far exceeded my humble expectations.
Wellness Recovery Action Plan Overview
This e-learning course is an overview of the Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP)® written by Mary Ellen Copeland. It is designed for people who are helping others develop WRAP plans. While WRAP is a simple system, its use and the values and ethics that surround it are far-reaching and highly complex . Upon completion of this course you will be able to guide, facilitate, advise, support and encourage another person (patients, clients, peers, friends, family members) as they develop a Wellness Recovery Action Plan using the values and ethics that have evolved as people have used this mental health recovery innovation.
This course has been approved for continuing education credit from ANCC, ASWB, NBCC and many state specific accreditation bodies.
From a WRAP Facilitator and Program Director
I can't tell you enough how much WRAP has meant to persons in my area. our group of 21 facilitators who were trained in March have provided WRAP training to about 200 people. We are still conducting trainings and have more planned. It seems that we have been able to adapt the trainings to fit audiences and time frames that are available. Sometimes the trainings are 1 1/2 hours a week over 8 weeks. Sometimes they are one-to-one over five days while on a crisis unit. One of our favorites has been to do the traiing over two days for 4 hours each day. I presented a short introduciton to WRAP for alcohol and substance abuse counselors recently and they were very excited adn wanted to learn more.
This work has given such hope and power to so many. When I am teaching and there are persons in the audience with lived experience, I see it in their eyes, the "finally someting makes sense and I can really use" look. One of our trainers shared that a lady came up to her recently after participating in training over a number of weeks and shared that she had been receiving different forms of therapy for 30 years and WRAP was the first thing that had really helped her.
Susan Lang, a person with lived experience, Consumer Affairs Director
View Wellness Recovery sample exercises from Mary Ellen’s books On this page you’ll find three interactive Wellness Recovery exercises on Wellness Tools, scheduling, and relaxation techniques from books by Mary Ellen Copeland. We invite you to try these exercises and see how these simple plans, designed by you, can bring remarkable results.
Wellness Recovery Action Plan Overview
WRAP One on One e-learning
Values and Ethics: Mental Health Recovery and WRAP Checklist and Worksheet
