One therapist commented, saying that using a treatment plan during therapy was “rigid” and “unsophisticated” and that she liked to “go with the flow”. She was emphatic—a treatment plan “constrained her creativity as a therapist”.

But therapy is not about the therapist. It is about helping patients.

Life rolls on while you are in therapy and a myriad of events can occur. Suppose you got a DWI? Or suppose you were recovering from being a former member of a cult? Or maybe you had just faced a new challenge—you lost the use, heaven forbid, of your legs in a workplace accident? These and a myriad of other challenges should be noted in your mental health treatment plan since they are a significant current part of your life.

People are complicated and no matter how thorough a psychosocial evaluation is it simply cannot describe fully a living, breathing person. It is rather a sketch—a good sketch, perhaps—but nonetheless a sketch.

Richard Zwolinski

Hear an information-packed (and funny!) discussion with professional mediators Philip Mulford, J.D., and his wife, journalist Lisa Mulford (hosts of Internet radio talk shows Divorce Mediation: Myths & Facts and Communication 360), and Richard as they explore a broad range of topics related to therapy including:

Whose fault is it when therapy fails–the therapist’s or the patient’s?

Why therapy patients must advocate for themselves?

Are some therapists in it for the money?

Why some people are magnets for people with problems?

I would be surprised if your schedules didn’t change over the course of therapy. During therapy, as you do more intense work, the frequency of your sessions might increase, and as you improve, the frequency will usually decrease.

To give our readers a better sense of what an effective mental health treatment plan looks like, I have been recreating a treatment plan here through a series of blog posts. To see other posts in the Mental Health Treatment Plan series, please click here.

The next section of the mental health treatment plan is often referred to as “Recommendations.” Recommendations are closely related to our previous post in the Mental Health Treatment Plan series, the section about Partners in Therapy. Recommendations, which may require serious thought, fine-tuned perception, as well as practical research by your therapist, may actually refer to some of your partners in therapy. For example, your therapist may recommend that you see another type of professional while you are in therapy, such as a psychiatrist, a medical doctor, a social worker, and so on who might also be described as a partner in therapy. He might be specific—for example, he may recommend you get a complete physical in order to determine that your symptoms don’t have a physiological basis. Or he might suggest that you do a particular activity with a supportive friend or family member.

To give our readers a better sense of what an effective mental health treatment plan looks like, I have been recreating a treatment plan here through a series of blog posts. To see other posts in the Mental Health Treatment Plan series, please click here.

Relationship—to God, self, family, friends, coworkers, and others—is for many of us the most defining, challenging, and rewarding aspect of our lives. Broken hearts, misunderstood murmurings, deep and abiding love, retreat, annoyance, inspiration, even anger, are the messy colors with which relationships finger-paint our days. While work, sports, even spiritual service and other activities may excite or dismay us, when it comes to our relationships we can never quite pin down our feelings—they are always in flux due to the ever-changing dynamics of intention, emotions, and shifting meaning.

Recently, radio host Michael Dresser made a very apt comparison. He said that it seems that therapy can be approached at least somewhat starting like a business. Having a business plan certainly helps and in terms of assessing goals, addressing budgetary concerns, and so on, the comparison holds. But what about in terms of time-frame projections, that is, target dates for progress? I contend that the business-plan model can work. In therapy, as in business, one should set target dates for achieving goals and schedule regular check-ins to make sure that things are on the right track.

To give our readers a better sense of what an effective mental health treatment plan looks like, I have been recreating a treatment plan here through a series of blog posts. To see other posts in this series, please click here.

If your therapist is the GPS, you are the driver. Ultimately, you have control over where you are going emotionally.*

Therefore, outlining courses of action that you will take is as vital to your success as are your therapist’s courses of action, which we discussed in our blog post Your Therapist’s “To Do” List. The next section of the mental health treatment plan I use is called the Patient’s Objectives—in a nutshell, your own “to do” list. These objectives are the actual courses of action you will take to help you reach your goals. They will usually be a reflection of your therapist’s objectives.

To give our readers a better sense of what an effective mental health treatment plan looks like, I have been recreating a treatment plan here through a series of blog posts. To see other posts in this series, please click here.

The next section of the mental health treatment plan I like to use is number three—the Therapist’s Objectives—in a nutshell, your therapist’s “to do” list. These objectives are the actual courses of action that your therapist will take to help you reach your goals. They may be very specific, and describe the methods and techniques (also known as interventions), that your therapist will be using. Or, they may be more general.