You cannot write this plan for them, and if you could it would not work. What you can do is raise it well, hold the parts they ask you to hold, and make sure the plan is somewhere findable when it matters.
The short answer: bring it up while they are well, start from what has helped them before rather than from what you think should happen, and accept that the answer might be no. The plan belongs to them. Your job is to make it easier to write and possible to find.
Most people arrive here frightened of two things at once. The next crisis, and becoming the person who takes away the say of someone who has just lost a great deal of it. Those fears pull in opposite directions, which is why this is hard, and why most advice about crisis plans skips straight past it.
A psychiatric advance directive, sometimes called an advance statement or a crisis plan, is a statement someone writes while they are well about how they want to be treated if a crisis leaves them unable to say so in the moment. Which treatments help, which to avoid, who to contact, who not to involve.
The mechanics are covered thoroughly elsewhere and there is no reason to repeat them here. NAMI and SAMHSA both publish plain guides, and forms differ by state. Our own guide to advance directives is written for the person making one, so it is the better thing to hand them when the time comes.
This page is the other half: what the conversation asks of you.
Timing does most of the work. Raise it during a settled stretch, never in the middle of a hard week, and never straight after a hospital stay. A plan written under pressure records the pressure, not the person.
Then start from their experience rather than your proposal. The single most useful opening is a question about the past: what helped last time, what made things worse, who they were glad to see and who they were not. That question puts them in the seat they are entitled to, which is the expert on their own illness. It also produces better material than any form prompt, because it comes from something that actually happened.
What tends to go wrong is arriving with the form already filled in. It reads as a decision that has been made about them rather than by them, and it converts a planning conversation into an argument about control. If you have done reading in advance, say so, then put it down.
Some practical framing that helps: this is a document that gives instructions to other people, not to them. It is written to be used by clinicians and by whoever they name. Its whole purpose is that their voice is the one in the room on a day when they cannot speak for themselves.
No is a legitimate answer, and it is worth saying that out loud to them. Pushing past it costs more than the document is worth, because the trust you spend is the same trust the plan would depend on later.
Leave the door open without leaving it ajar. Say plainly that you will follow their lead and that you will not raise it again for a while, then keep that promise. Revisit after a stable stretch rather than after a bad week, when it would land as a reaction rather than as planning.
There is useful work you can do alone in the meantime, and none of it requires their agreement. Know how to reach their prescriber. Keep the 988 line where you can find it without searching. Write your own notes on what you have seen help, so that if you are ever asked, you are recalling rather than guessing. That last one matters more than it sounds: the specific fear people describe after a crisis is not that nobody helped, it is that decisions were made by people who did not know them.
Being named as someone’s health care agent generally means speaking for their stated preferences when they cannot speak for themselves. Not deciding what you would want. Not deciding what seems best. Speaking for what they already said.
In practice that asks three things of you. Knowing the preferences well enough to state them under pressure, being reachable, and being willing to hold a position that clinicians or other relatives may push against. It is worth being honest with yourself and with them about whether you can do the third one. Declining is a reasonable answer, and better said now than discovered later.
The role is defined differently from state to state, as is the paperwork that names an agent and how much force it carries. Treat everything here as general description rather than instruction, and talk to a professional about the specifics where you live.
A plan nobody can find at 2am does nothing. This is the step most guides mention in one line and then leave, and it is the one that decides whether any of the rest mattered.
At minimum: a copy with their prescriber or care team, a copy with whoever they named, and one place the household knows about. If they carry a card or a note saying the document exists and where it is, that helps more than the document sitting perfectly filed somewhere nobody thinks to look.
This is the part Trusted Directive is built for. One place for the documents that matter, reachable by the people who would need them, so the question during a crisis is not where did they keep it. It does not stop a crisis and nothing claims to. It removes the search.
Educational information only. Not medical or legal advice. Rules for advance directives and for naming a health care agent vary by state.
Raise it while they are well, never during a hard stretch, and start from their experience rather than your proposal. Asking what has helped before puts them in the expert seat. Arriving with a filled-in form and asking them to sign does the opposite, and it is the fastest way to turn a planning conversation into a fight about control.
No is a legitimate answer and pushing past it costs more than it gains. Leave the door open, say plainly that you will follow their lead, and revisit after a stable stretch rather than after a bad week. There is useful work you can do alone in the meantime, like knowing their prescriber and keeping the 988 line to hand.
Broadly, speaking for their stated preferences if they cannot speak for themselves, which means knowing those preferences in advance rather than guessing. The role is defined differently from state to state and the paperwork that names an agent varies too, so treat this as general description and talk to a professional about your situation.
Somewhere reachable at 2am by the people who would need it. In practice that means copies with their prescriber and their named agent, and one place the household knows about. A plan nobody can find during a crisis does nothing, which is the failure mode most guides skip.
Written for the person making one: what goes in it, why to write it while you are well, and a free plain-language template. This is the one to hand them.
The wider problem of one findable place for the papers a family needs, and the failure mode nobody mentions.