Spotting and preventing setbacks

Late in treatment as the client is approaching termination, after any significant gain that needs to be protected, and again at the first sign of regression. The point is to make the early-warning signs explicit so the client recognises a slip before it becomes a full relapse.

The form has 11 fields. “Five things you’ll do to avoid a setback in the future” is a repeating block with at least 5 rows, each with 1 sub-field (long-text).

A clinical note worth holding: clients who can’t name early signs because they typically only notice trouble after they’ve crashed. Help them list the small signals they tend to dismiss (sleep changes, appetite shifts, social withdrawal, mounting irritability). Also: the people-who-can-tell-me question matters. Clients who don’t trust anyone to flag their slips are at higher risk for unwitnessed relapse.

In my-cbt, this is a system template. Assign it from the case file, customise the personal message, and the submission saves with a timestamp when the client submits. The repeating sections expand on screen instead of running out of room in a margin.