Empowered by Connection: The Value of Mental Health Relapse Prevention

According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), 59.3 million (23.1%) adults in the U.S. experience any mental illness (AMI) or a serious mental illness (SMI). In addition to experiencing one or more mental health disorders, many people face challenges with co-occurring substance use. As noted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), approximately 21.5 million adults in the U.S. have co-occurring mental health disorders and substance use disorder (SUD). Access to mental health relapse prevention is vital to avoiding a mental health relapse. Whether you experience mental health challenges alone or co-occurring SUD, addressing mental health is an important part of maintaining recovery.

At Driftwood Recovery, we know how important connection and community integration are in transitioning into recovery. Making the shift from a structured treatment program to continuing care in recovery can feel daunting. Continuing to heal from dual diagnosis or co-occurring mental health and SUD challenges can further complicate healing. Life is naturally filled with stressors that can impair well-being and increase the risk of relapse. You deserve access to a continuing care network where you can find support and accountability to thrive. 

As a result, we are committed to providing an engaging alumni program with services and resources for mental health relapse prevention. Yet, you may question what is mental health relapse prevention. If you have experienced challenges with SUD, you are likely aware of the prevalence of addiction relapse. However, you may be less familiar with the concept of mental health relapse and mental health relapse prevention. By expanding your awareness of mental health relapse, you can understand the value of mental health relapse prevention in your recovery. 

What Is a Mental Health Relapse?

In general, a mental health relapse occurs when mental health disorder symptoms return after a period of improvement or remission. Moreover, a mental health relapse can also include the worsening of mental health symptoms following recovery. Due to misconceptions about mental health, it can be difficult to recognize the significance of a relapse or the need for treatment. As SAMHSA notes, mental health includes your emotional, psychological, and social well-being. Thus, mental health plays an important role in how you think, feel, and behave.

According to “The Lifetime Prevalence and Factors Associated with Relapse Among Mentally Ill Patients at Jimma University Medical Center, Ethiopia” by Liyew Agenagnew and Chalachew Kassaw, mental health relapse is common in all types of mental health disorders. For example, there is a 52–92% relapse rate for individuals with schizophrenia and 65-73% for those with bipolar disorder. Therefore, it is invaluable to mental health relapse prevention to understand the risk factors for mental health relapse.

Risk Factors for Mental Health Relapse

There are a variety of risk factors that can contribute to a mental health relapse. Risk factors can impede recovery, whether external, internal, or related to behavioral changes. Listed below are some of the risk factors for mental health relapse:

• Stressful life events
• Changes in sleep habits
• Conflict with others
• Poor social support
• Unemployment
• Low income
• Loneliness and isolation
• Stigma
• Co-occurring conditions
• Poor medication adherence
• Lack of community mental health services

Looking at the risk factors for mental health relapse highlights the need for mental health relapse prevention.

Value of Mental Health Relapse Prevention

Reducing or recovering from mental health symptoms is something to take pride in on your recovery journey. However, lasting recovery does not start and end with treatment. Countless factors, including life stressors, can contribute to impeding your mental well-being. As a result, mental health relapse prevention can give you the tools to manage your symptoms in your daily life. With mental health relapse prevention, you can build resilience to life stressors to lead a healthy life in recovery:

• Self-awareness
• Self-monitoring
• Self-care
• Self-determination
• Life satisfaction
• Set and achieve goals

Despite the benefits of mental health relapse prevention, various barriers work to impede sustained recovery.

Dismantling Barriers to Mental Health Relapse Prevention

Barriers to mental health relapse prevention often overlap with risk factors for relapse. For example, many barriers to mental health support are tied to the cost of services, stigma, and poor social support. However, as the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment notes, a better understanding of perceived barriers can help create accessible and integrated services to meet the needs of each individual. The barriers to support can feel daunting, but with continuing care, barriers can be dismantled to support maintaining recovery. Beyond medication management and therapy, support tools can include:

• Nutrition
• Physical activity
• Peer support

Yet, how do you take steps toward better mental health care post-treatment? Through trusted continuing care support in an alumni program, you can build a mental health relapse prevention plan to support you throughout recovery.

Building a Mental Health Relapse Prevention Plan

Creating a mental health relapse prevention plan is an important step toward recognizing your symptoms. When you can recognize your symptoms, you can use tools to manage your symptoms and feel better in your daily life. Your mental health relapse prevention plan should include:

• Monitor mood
• Quality sleep
• Exercise
• Hobbies
• Gratitude
• Reframe thoughts
• Stay connected
• Adaptive coping strategies
• Medication maintenance
• Help-seeking behaviors

With an active alumni program, you can access services and resources to help you build and maintain your relapse prevention plan. Moreover, you can find connections and community among alumni who remind you that you are not alone in your recovery.

Power of Connection for Mental Health at Driftwood Recovery

At Driftwood Recovery, we know a strong alumni program gives you a foundation of connection and community for long-term wellness. Through a peer-driven approach to continuing care, you foster self-efficacy to manage the setbacks and challenges that arise in recovery. We are dedicated to providing a continuing care program built on compassion, support, service, and accountability. Lasting healing does not happen alone, and with a supportive, sober community, you can build a courageous life in recovery.

Addiction relapse is not the only form of relapse that can impede your well-being. Mental health relapse can disrupt your recovery whether you have co-occurring SUD or not. Following treatment, there are various risk factors and barriers that can lead to a mental health relapse, like stigma, financial stressors, and poor social support. Therefore, building a mental health relapse prevention plan is invaluable to symptom management and sustained recovery. With access to an active alumni program in continuing care, you can connect to a sober community and resources to support relapse prevention. At Driftwood Recovery, we are dedicated to providing a peer-driven approach to recovery post-treatment. Call (512) 759-8330 to learn how alumni can support you.

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), in the U.S., 48.7 million people (17.3%) have substance use disorder (SUD). The prevalence of SUD is staggering, but as SAMHSA notes, 21.3 million (71.0%) adults consider themselves to be in recovery. Although entering recovery is important, maintaining recovery is equally important. Therefore, uncovering and building relapse prevention tools is invaluable to lasting recovery. 

As noted in Addiction Relapse Prevention by Nicholas Guenzel et al., approximately 50% of people relapse within the first 12 weeks post-treatment. The prevalence of relapse early in recovery is tied to early recovery as a vulnerable time as you step down in level of care to build an independent life in recovery. Despite the importance of independence in recovery, it is important to know recovery and relapse prevention tools are not built in isolation. Thus, access to support and services for relapse prevention tools can be the difference between sustained recovery and relapse.

At Driftwood Recovery, we know that making the transition from structured care to ongoing recovery can be overwhelming. Therefore, we are dedicated to providing peer support in our alumni and community integration programs (CIP) to help you recover. With a person-centered model of care and integration, you can reconnect with yourself and others. Moreover, with a community of support in alumni, you can build relapse prevention tools to set the foundation for a meaningful life in recovery.

Yet, you may question how an addiction relapse can happen. What is your risk for addiction relapse? How can you prevent yourself from becoming a statistic for chronic relapse? Deepening your understanding of addiction relapse can provide insight into how relapse happens. Moreover, understanding addiction relapse can help you learn how to build relapse prevention tools.

What Is Addiction Relapse?

Addiction relapse is an unfortunate but common feature of addiction and recovery. In general, addiction relapse occurs when you stop maintaining your goal to reduce or avoid the use of substances. However, addiction relapse is often more complex than returning to the misuse or abuse of a substance or substances. As stated by the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, addiction relapse is a gradual process. Thus, across weeks and months, there is a gradual shift in the way you feel and think about your addiction before you return to misuse or abuse. 

Addiction relapse is not only a gradual process but can be broken into three distinct stages:

• Emotional: Occurs when you do not focus on healing the whole of your parts
  • Only focuses on abstinence 
  • Ineffective emotional, mental, and physical self-care
• Mental: Occurs when you struggle with the desire to use substances
  • Minimizing or glamorizing substance use
• Physical: Occurs when you initiate the misuse or abuse of substances
  • You are no longer in control of your consumption

The stages of relapse highlight the need to recognize risk factors that can contribute to relapse.

Risk Factors for Addiction Relapse

Despite being a chronic relapsing condition, some factors can put you at greater risk for relapse. Some risk factors for addiction relapse include:

• Associating with individuals with active SUD
• Inadequate support
  • Rejection from loved ones
  • Social marginalization
• Easy access to substances 
• Chronic pain
• Unemployment
• Low income
• Housing instability
• Low self-efficacy
• Poor motivation
• Lack of adaptive coping skills

Looking at the risk factors for relapse showcases the need for support and relapse prevention tools.

How Can Relapse Prevention Tools Help?

Everyone’s progress toward recovery and maintenance is unique to them. However, access to relapse prevention tools can provide a foundation to support your specific needs for sustained recovery. Supporting sustained abstinence from substance use is an important aspect of relapse prevention tools. However, relapse prevention tools can also support whole-person healing across multiple domains of your life. Some of the other ways relapse prevention tools can help you include:

• Improve adaptive coping skills
• Increase motivation
• Greater self-efficacy
• Support self-regulation
• Strengthen support network
• Enhance self-awareness
• Build positive self-image
• Enhance self-care

Relapse prevention tools can be invaluable to long-term healing inside and out. Therefore, addressing and dismantling barriers to building relapse prevention tools is vital.

Addressing Barriers to Relapse Prevention Tools

Much like recovery itself, barriers to relapse prevention tools are multifaceted. There are numerous domains, from emotional and cognitive to environmental and social stressors, that can act as barriers to recovery. According to the Canadian Journal of Addiction, some of the barriers to maintaining recovery include:

• Poor awareness and or access to recovery resources
  • Mental and emotional challenges
  • Continuing care services
    • Support groups
    • Employment
• Health challenges
  • Chronic pain
• Cost of support services
• Stigma
• Poor support network
• Unstable housing
• Low income

Looking at the barriers to maintaining recovery highlights the need for tailored relapse prevention tools. A tailored relapse prevention plan can address your specific experiences and needs.

Empowering Healing With a Relapse Prevention Plan

A relapse prevention plan can help you build healthy tools to manage and process challenges that arise during your recovery. Listed below are some strategies that you can explore for your individualized relapse prevention plan:

• Eat nutritious foods
• Build a sleep routine
• Exercise
• Yoga
• Meditation
• Support network
  • Peers
  • Trusted loved ones
• Journaling
• Activities and hobbies
• Short and long-term goals

Through an active alumni program, you can learn how to build relapse prevention tools that match your life.

Building Relapse Prevention Tools at Driftwood Recovery

At Driftwood Recovery, we believe in providing comprehensive alumni services to meet you where you are. In a thriving, sober community, you can find the support you need to address challenges that arise in recovery. Whether you are entering early recovery or have been in recovery for a while, life stressors can impede healing. You can achieve recovery, personal, and professional goals with access to resources like peer support and workshops. An engaged and supportive alumni community gives you space to build tools to reintegrate into your community and lead a courageous life in recovery. 

In recovery, there are life stressors that attempt to impede your recovery. While stressors are a normal part of life, when left to fester, they can increase your risk of relapse. Therefore, access to relapse prevention tools can help address risk factors like low income, psychological stress, and poor social support. Moreover, relapse prevention tools can help you build a relapse prevention plan to reduce barriers to recovery and enhance whole-person healing. Through a relapse prevention plan, you can improve coping skills, increase motivation, and strengthen your support network. At Driftwood Recovery, we are dedicated to providing comprehensive services and resources in a peer-driven alumni program to support sustained recovery. Call us at (512) 759-8330 to learn more today.