What’s Next? Treatment for Mental Illness: Moving Forward and Next Steps

With acceptance, you are ready to take concrete steps to continue your life with a mental illness. For most people that means engaging in long-term care. Just as you would continue to receive treatment and monitoring for a chronic physical condition like diabetes, you need ongoing care for mental illness.

Long-term treatment is what you need in order to make lasting and positive behavioral changes that will let you get back to a routine and normal life. Without this follow-up care, you run the serious risk of making no changes, which means you will eventually end up back in the same place and the same state of mind.

Inpatient care for mental illness after the initial stabilization period is one of the most important things you can do for recovery. A residential facility can provide a safe place to focus on getting well, changing behaviors, and learning how to get your life back. Patients have the opportunity to learn life skills, coping strategies, and to practice positive socializing with others.

The duration of time spent in a residential facility matters, too. In a study of patients with a dual diagnosis of mental illness and substance use disorder, those who completed a long-term residential program had much better outcomes, including greater abstinence from drugs and alcohol.

A stay in residential treatment is a great way to begin moving on with your life after a mental health crisis. But working on your good mental health and making positive changes shouldn’t end there. It will still be a challenging transition to go from daily treatment to life back at home. This is where aftercare services can be so important.

One study of patients who were hospitalized for severe mental illness found that specific aftercare interventions significantly reduced the rate of readmission to a hospital or psychiatric unit. Those patients with better results were offered in-home visits and phone calls from mental health workers. They also received psychoeducation with their families, an education and training program to help family members be better able to help their loved ones manage symptoms.

Another benefit of inpatient care and aftercare is that they give you a chance to gradually return to the other parts of your life. While in treatment you will learn how to develop stronger and more communicative relationships with friends and family. You may even have important people in your life come in and participate in sessions to practice what you learn.

Another area of life that many patients worry about is work. A serious mental illness doesn’t have to stop you from working and being independent. The right treatment program will prepare you to go back to your old job or to find a new position that better suits your needs. Treatment will provide you with a daily routine, which helps patients feel stable and secure, and this is something you will be able to apply to your life once you return home.

Mental illness triggered the crisis that led to the need for treatment, but there were likely other factors in your life that exacerbated symptoms. As you transition back to home and a new way of life, recognize that you may need to make some changes. But go easy on yourself and make those changes gradually.

For instance, maybe you have a friend who drains your energy and makes you feel anxious. You may need to step back from that friendship and spend more time with people who help you feel whole and calm. Physical lifestyle changes can be important, too, such as prioritizing sleep when you used to get only a few hours a night, or taking steps to make better food choices.

Listen to the journey through mental illness that patients have experienced and what worked for them, and use them to inspire your next steps.

“With severe depression and anxiety, I found myself engaging in very self-destructive behaviors. I was drinking too much and even cutting. It got to the point where my parents had to take me to the hospital. I was there for three days, and while I felt better I knew I just didn’t feel right still. I didn’t know what to do next, but then I was told about a residential treatment facility. I spent three months there, and it made such a difference. It helped me accept that I have a real illness that is never going to go away, but now I know how to manage it. I still struggle with depression, but I haven’t had an anxiety attack in months, and I have tools I know how to use to recognize depressive moods before they get severe. I use tools I learned in treatment to make sure these episodes don’t get out of control. I’m back at work now and doing much better. I feel confident that I won’t need to get to a point of breakdown again before I ask for help.”

“Our son has been living with schizophrenia since he was about 13. We had to have him hospitalized several times just to keep him safe and to get him stable again. But it kept happening, and that’s when we turned to an inpatient program for long-term care. It helped him take the time to learn what medication would work best and with fewer side effects, but the treatment also delved into behavioral changes and learning to recognize triggers for episodes. Our son lives at home now, and we are still struggling with independence, but he copes much better than he used to. He hasn’t even gotten close to an episode like the last one that sent him to the hospital.”

Moving on with your life even though you have a serious mental illness means putting in the effort to make real and lasting changes. It’s not something you can do on your own. The most important thing you can do to make your future better is to work with professionals and really dedicate some time to learning how to live with your illness.