Psychosis can be a disruptive, confusing, and frightening experience. Hearing voices or thinking unusual or disturbing thoughts is common in psychosis. Having psychosis makes it difficult to figure out what is really happening and what may be a trick of the mind. Psychosis often prevents people from doing the things they used to do—such as going to work or school and enjoying time with friends and family.
The good news is that psychosis is a treatable condition.
Treatment for psychosis is provided by health professionals and involves a number of different approaches, including medication. This toolkit is not meant to be a substitute for the treatments provided by your health professionals. Instead, the toolkit is to be used along with treatment by professionals.
Dealing with Pyschosis toolkit
- Download the full toolkit
- Section One: About this Toolkit and Monitoring your Progress
- Section Two: What is Psychosis?
- Section Three: What Can You Do About Psychosis?
- Section Four: Taking Care of Your Health
- Section Five: Managing Stress
- Section Six: Solving Problems
- Section Seven: Setting Goals and Moving Forward
- Section Eight: Understanding Cognition
- Section Nine: Connecting With Other People
- Section Ten: Preventing Relapse
- Section Eleven: Dealing With Symptoms
- Section Twelve: Additional Resources, Extra Worksheets and Acknowledgements
- Section Thirteen: Section For the Support Person
This toolkit is meant to help you learn skills you can use to:
- Manage symptoms of psychosis
- Move forward and enjoy your life
Learning new skills is not easy. It’s important that you have somebody who can support you in the learning process. This is your Support Person. Think of who might best be able to help support you in learning these skills.
Your Support Person might be a:
- A health professional
- Family member
- Close friend
Pick someone you feel comfortable with and can trust. You may choose to have a few different people support you. Some of the skills in this toolkit will be easier to learn and practice if you have more than one Support Person.
If you don’t have a Support Person, you can still use this toolkit and learn new skills. Some people who have used the toolkit alone said that they found it useful but felt it would be even better having a Support Person available.
A section of this guide is specifically for the Support Person.
Using this toolkit
There are many ways to use this toolkit. You can start in any section and work through the toolkit in any order.
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Some of the topics may be more useful to you than others.
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Pick and choose what parts you want to work on.
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There are many activities in this toolkit.
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Some of the activities are challenging.
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Give yourself time and be patient.
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Learning new skills takes time.
Section One: About this Toolkit and Monitoring your Progress
Information on how to use the toolkit and monitor your progress
Section Two: What is Psychosis?
Learn about the symptoms of psychosis and the six different facts that may contribute to the onset of psychosis.
Section Three: What Can You Do About Psychosis?
This section focuses on the importance of learning new skills, finding good support and taking effective medication. There are some worksheets here you can use to better understand the medication you are prescribed.
Section Four: Taking Care of Your Health
Information on sleep, exercise and other factors that contribute to a healthy lifestyle.
Section Five: Managing Stress
Learn techniques to help you deal with and manage your stress.
Section Six: Solving Problems
Here you will find a popular and effective six-step method used to identify and solve problems.
Section Seven: Setting Goals and Moving Forward
This section provides tips and worksheets to help you set and achieve goals for yourself.
Section Eight: Understanding Cognition
Here you will find useful ways that you can better deal with any difficulties concerning memory, attention and other aspects of cogntion.
Section Nine: Connecting With Other People
This sections contains activities to help you examine your current social circle and identify opportunities for connecting with other people.
Section Ten: Preventing Relapse
The activities in this section include identifying triggers for psychosis, recognizing early warning signs of relapse and developing a full relapse prevention plan.
Section Eleven: Dealing With Symptoms
This section offers suggestions for different strategies for dealing with symptoms of psychosis.
Section Twelve: Additional Resources, Extra Worksheets and Acknowledgements
Here you find links to other sources of information that you may find helpful. There are extra copies of the worksheets located in this section as well. And you can read a bit about how the toolkit was developed in the acknowledgements here.
Section Thirteen: Section For the Support Person
This section is designed specifically for your support person to help them best support you. You should provide your selected support person with a copy of this section or direct them to this website. And feel free to look through this section if you are curious.
