Bring T-MAPs to Your Program

Most crisis plans are written in a hurry, by people who just met the person, at the worst possible moment. T-MAPs helps people write their own plan earlier, in their own words, with someone beside them.

For twenty years, T-MAPs has been used in peer support communities, peer workforce trainings, and early psychosis programs across the United States. We're looking for partners to bring it to more people.

Who it's for

• Early intervention and first-episode psychosis programs
• Peer support programs and peer workforce trainings
• Hospital and residential programs planning for discharge
• Community mental health and crisis services
• Counties, foundations, and organizations building community-based care

How T-MAPs fits with what you already use

T-MAPs doesn't replace psychiatric advance directives or shared decision-making tools. It works underneath them.

• A psychiatric advance directive records what should happen in a crisis: who decides, which treatments, which hospital.
• Shared decision-making tools support the conversation between a person and their clinician.
• A T-MAP records who the person is when they're well: their values, strengths, early warning signs, what helps, and who they trust. It gives the other two something to stand on.

Many people use their T-MAP as the starting point for a formal advance directive. Over five weeks, people write one section at a time and practice it with someone in their life. By the time they sign a directive, the people named in it already know what to do.

What a partnership can look like

• Training, in person or online, for peer workers and staff. Everyone starts by making their own map, then learns to lead the five-week course with the people you serve.
• T-MAPs groups run by your staff or ours, where people build their maps together.
• Planning at transition points: first episode, discharge from hospital, or the end of a crisis, when people are steady enough to say what they'd want next time.
• Materials adapted to your setting, including language, culture, and the population you serve.
• Evaluation: we'd like to learn with you what changes when people have a map in their own words.

Our principles

• Voluntary. No one is required to make a T-MAP.
• Owned by the person. A T-MAP is not a clinical record unless the person chooses to share it.
• Peer-led where possible. People with lived experience facilitate the process.
• No single model. People describe their experience in their own words, whether or not they use a diagnosis.

Who's behind T-MAPs

T-MAPs was created by Sascha Altman DuBrul and Jacks McNamara, co-founders of The Icarus Project. Sascha designed the peer specialist role for OnTrackNY, New York State's first-episode psychosis program, and has trained peer workers and clinicians for more than a decade.

The ask

Want to bring T-MAPs to your community? Reach out to us. Tell us a little about your work, and whether you'd like training in person or online.