Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP)
A Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP) is a self-designed and individualised mental health and wellness tool individuals use to develop strategies for maintaining their well-being, managing their mental health challenges, and creating a personal action plan for crises. Mary Ellen Copeland, an advocate for mental health recovery, developed the WRAP approach. Mental health consumers, peer support specialists, and mental health professionals have widely embraced it.
The main goal of WRAP is to empower individuals to take an active role in their mental health recovery and wellness journey. It emphasises personal responsibility, self-advocacy, and self-determination. WRAP encourages individuals to identify their triggers, early warning signs of worsening mental health, and coping strategies that work best for them. The WRAP process typically involves five key steps:
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Developing a Wellness Toolbox: Individuals create a list of coping strategies, wellness activities, and helpful resources for maintaining their well-being. This can include meditation, exercise, spending time with loved ones, or engaging in creative hobbies.
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Identifying Triggers and Early Warning Signs: Participants learn to recognise the warning signs and triggers that may lead to a decline in their mental health. By identifying these early, they can take preventive actions.
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Creating Action Plans: In this step, individuals develop specific action plans to address various stages of their mental health journey, including day-to-day maintenance, coping with increased symptoms, and crises.
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Developing a Crisis Plan: The crisis plan outlines the steps to take and the individuals to contact during a mental health crisis. It can include information about support networks, healthcare providers, and emergency contacts.
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Post-Crisis Planning: WRAP also includes post-crisis planning, helping individuals identify how to recover and resume their wellness journey after a crisis has passed.
WRAP is typically used in individual or group settings and can be facilitated by trained peer support specialists or mental health professionals. It is intended to be a living document that evolves in response to the individual's experiences and changing needs.
The Copeland Center for Wellness and Recovery is a United States–based, peer-run organisation that develops and globalises recovery-focused frameworks—most notably the Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP). Founded to continue the work of Mary Ellen Copeland, the Centre acts as a global hub for peer-led recovery education, providing training, certification, and programs that help individuals and organisations build wellness, self-determination, and recovery-oriented systems. At a systems level, its role is not just service delivery—it is model creation and dissemination. The Centre trains facilitators worldwide and embeds peer-developed approaches like WRAP into mental health systems, workplaces, and communities, helping shift care from crisis response to prevention and self-management.
Mary Ellen Copeland is a United States–based mental health advocate, author, and pioneer of the peer recovery movement, best known for developing the Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP). Drawing on her own lived experience of mental health challenges, she created WRAP as a practical, structured way for people to take control of their wellbeing, shifting the focus from illness to recovery, self-determination, and empowerment. Her work has had a global impact—transforming peer support into a replicable framework used by individuals, services, and systems worldwide, and helping establish lived experience as a legitimate source of knowledge within mental health care.
The Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP) is a peer-developed, structured self-management framework that helps individuals take control of their mental health and wellbeing through personalised planning grounded in lived experience. Created by Mary Ellen Copeland, WRAP provides a practical way for people to identify what keeps them well, recognise early signs of distress, and take proactive steps to maintain or restore their wellbeing. It typically includes key components such as:
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Daily maintenance plans (what keeps you well)
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Identifying triggers and action plans
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Early warning signs
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When things are breaking down
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Crisis planning
At a systems level, WRAP is one of the most scalable tools in the peer movement—it can be used by individuals, facilitated in groups, and embedded across services, making it a replicable personal operating system for recovery that complements peer support and mental health services globally.
WRAP Facilitator Directory
The WRAP Facilitator Directory is a resource (typically maintained through the Copeland Center for Wellness and Recovery) that lists certified WRAP facilitators around the world who are trained to deliver Wellness Recovery Action Plan workshops. It connects individuals, organisations, and services with trained facilitators who can run WRAP groups, provide training, and support implementation—acting as the key bridge between the WRAP model and real-world delivery.
WRAP® Connect Maryland
The WRAP Connect Maryland is a Maryland-based, peer-led initiative that promotes and delivers the Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP) across the state through training, workshops, and community engagement. It focuses on building a network of certified WRAP facilitators and expanding access to WRAP groups, helping individuals develop their own recovery plans while strengthening the peer workforce.
The WRAP Project Return Peer Support Network is a California-based, peer-run organisation that integrates the Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP) into its recovery-oriented services, including peer support, housing, and employment programs. It uses WRAP as a core tool to help individuals develop personalised wellness plans, build self-management skills, and support long-term recovery within community-based settings.
WRAP Project Return Peer Support Network
WRAP Group- The Web
The WRAP Group - The Web is a peer-led initiative run by The Web Alaska that delivers Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP) groups for individuals with lived experience of mental health challenges. It provides structured, peer-facilitated WRAP sessions where participants develop personalised wellness plans, learn self-management strategies, and support one another through shared lived experience.
WRAP - Wellness In The Woods
The Wellness in the Woods WRAP Program is a peer-led initiative that delivers Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP) groups within a nature-based, community setting in Maine. It combines WRAP with outdoor, experiential environments—supporting individuals to develop personalised wellness plans while engaging in connection, reflection, and peer support in natural surroundings.
WRAP is already a global movement, with practitioners operating across multiple countries and contexts. Standardised through the Copeland Center for Wellness and Recovery and distributed via the WRAP Facilitator Directory, the model maintains a high degree of consistency in both its structure and delivery worldwide. This standardisation enables WRAP to be taught, facilitated, and implemented in a uniform way across diverse settings, from peer-run organisations to clinical services and community programs. At the same time, it retains flexibility for local adaptation, allowing it to be culturally embedded without losing its core principles.
As a result, WRAP represents a rare convergence of fidelity and scalability. It is not just a framework, but a globally replicable product—one that translates lived experience into a standardised methodology that can be delivered at scale while maintaining its integrity. In this sense, WRAP demonstrates how peer-developed knowledge can evolve into a globalised system of practice, providing a blueprint for how other lived experience models could be standardised, distributed, and embedded across the world.
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