A WRAP plan, or Wellness Recovery Action Plan, is a structured self-management tool that helps people maintain mental and physical wellness through daily habits, early warning recognition, and personalized action plans. Developed in 1997 by Mary Ellen Copeland and a group of peers in Vermont who had lived experience with mental health challenges, WRAP puts you in the driver’s seat of your own recovery and day-to-day wellbeing.
How WRAP Works
WRAP is built around a simple idea: you are the expert on yourself. Rather than relying solely on a clinician to tell you what to do, you create a written plan that maps out what keeps you well, what throws you off balance, and exactly what to do when things start to slide. The plan is personal. No two WRAPs look the same because no two people have the same triggers, coping strategies, or support networks.
The framework is organized into sections that move from everyday wellness all the way through crisis situations, giving you a concrete response plan for each level of difficulty. You fill out each section using your own “wellness toolbox,” a collection of strategies and activities you already know help you feel better. These might include things like exercise, journaling, calling a friend, getting enough sleep, spending time outdoors, or adjusting your daily routine.
The Five Key Concepts
Five principles run through every part of WRAP:
- Hope: The belief that you can get well, stay well, and pursue the life you want. WRAP explicitly rejects dire predictions about anyone’s future.
- Personal responsibility: You know what you need better than anyone else, and it’s up to you to take action on that knowledge.
- Education: Learning about yourself, your lifestyle choices, your relationships, and your options so you can make informed decisions.
- Self-advocacy: Expressing your needs clearly and working to get what you need with persistence and determination.
- Support: Building a circle of family, friends, community members, and providers. One of the best ways to strengthen your own support network is to be a source of support for others.
The Six Sections of a WRAP
Each section addresses a different stage of wellness or distress. You work through them in order, building a complete plan that covers your life from good days to worst-case scenarios.
Daily Maintenance Plan
This is the foundation. You start by describing what you look and feel like when you’re well. Then you list the wellness tools you need to use every single day to stay in that place, things like a consistent sleep schedule, regular meals, physical activity, or time with people you care about. Finally, you note things you might need to do on any given day but not necessarily every day, like attending an appointment or handling a stressful errand.
Triggers
Triggers are external events that could knock you off course. An argument with a friend, an unexpected bill, a stressful work deadline, or an anniversary of a difficult event are common examples. In this section, you identify your personal triggers and then write out a specific action plan for each one using tools from your wellness toolbox. The goal is to have a ready-made response so you’re not scrambling in the moment.
Early Warning Signs
These are the subtle internal signals that something is starting to shift. Maybe you notice you’re not sleeping well, feeling more anxious than usual, withdrawing from friends, or losing interest in things you normally enjoy. You list the signs that are specific to you and pair each one with an action plan designed to help you feel better quickly before things escalate.
When Things Are Breaking Down
This section addresses more serious symptoms that tell you the situation has progressed. Examples might include persistent sadness, inability to function at work, hearing voices, or thoughts of self-harm. The action plan here is more intensive, drawing heavily on your wellness toolbox and support network to pull you back from a crisis point.
Crisis Plan
The crisis plan is written in advance for situations where you may not be able to make decisions for yourself. It typically includes information about what others should know if you’re in crisis, who you want (and don’t want) making decisions on your behalf, what treatments or interventions you prefer, and what has helped or harmed you in past crises. This section functions somewhat like an advance directive for your mental health, giving the people around you clear instructions.
Post-Crisis Plan
After a crisis passes, you need a path back to daily life. This section outlines the steps for returning to your routine, reconnecting with your support network, and gradually reintroducing your daily wellness tools. It also helps you reflect on what happened so you can update the rest of your WRAP with anything you learned.
Who Uses WRAP
WRAP was originally created by and for people living with mental health conditions, but its use has expanded considerably. According to the National Council on Aging, WRAP is now used by people managing a wide range of health challenges including arthritis, diabetes, hepatitis C, HIV, chronic pain, and cancer survivorship. It’s also applied in substance use recovery and medication management. The core structure works for any ongoing condition where daily self-management, trigger awareness, and crisis planning make a meaningful difference in outcomes.
Mental health services and community organizations in multiple countries offer WRAP workshops, where trained peer facilitators guide participants through building their own plans. The peer-led model is intentional. Because WRAP was developed by people with lived experience, facilitation by peers reinforces the principle that recovery knowledge comes from the people doing the recovering, not just from clinicians.
How To Get Started
You can begin building a WRAP on your own with a notebook or printed template, though many people find it easier to attend a facilitated workshop. Workshops typically run over several sessions and walk you through each section with group support. Community mental health centers, peer support organizations, and some healthcare systems like Kaiser Permanente offer WRAP programming.
The most important thing to understand about WRAP is that it’s a living document. You don’t fill it out once and file it away. As you learn more about yourself, as your triggers change, as you discover new wellness tools that work, you update it. The plan grows with you. That ongoing process of paying attention to your own patterns and refining your response to them is, in many ways, the most valuable part of the whole framework.