How to Set Mental Health Goals During Treatment
Nothing can weigh down your motivation like a mental health condition. For instance, depression, which affects one out of five U.S. adults every year, can cause even small tasks to seem like a mighty challenge.1 Because emotionally, they are.
Conditions such as anxiety, depression, and trauma can hijack your brain’s natural drive, cloud your thoughts, and fog your decisions. As a result of these issues, you may have no option but to seek mental health treatment to preserve your well-being.
But what is the key to successful mental health treatment?
The secret lies in creating a mental health action plan and setting mental health goals during treatment. These goals are purpose-driven steps that help you rediscover your strengths and purpose.
As Muhammad Ali once put it, “It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.” In other words, you may encounter hurdles on your mental health journey, but having a plan can keep you on track.
A mental health professional can help you create meaningful mental health goals for treatment. This article can also work as a useful guide, as it covers:
- Why mental health goals matter in treatment
- Examples of goal setting for mental health recovery
- How to set mental health goals
- The SMART Framework for setting mental health goals
- The steps to creating a personal mental health action plan
- How to overcome challenges in setting mental health goals
Why Mental Health Goals Matter in Treatment
Mental health goal setting during treatment is important for helping you develop a clear roadmap for recovery from the outset. For instance, evidence shows that goal planning during treatment drives behaviors that bring about positive results.2
These mental health goals should be a set of achievable steps that provide a sense of direction and purpose. For instance, you and your mental health professional could discuss treatment needs and positive behavioral changes, and create an action plan based on these. Following an action plan allows you to track your progress and feel a sense of achievement. As a result, you can experience a boost of confidence, motivation, and self-worth – which inspires you to continue on the road to well-being.
A lack of goal setting, on the other hand, can lead to poorer treatment outcomes and emotional setbacks. But what do mental health treatment goals look like? We provide examples below to get you started.
Goal Setting for Mental Health Recovery: The 5 Pillars of Good Mental Health
Professionals often focus on five elements of well-being that you can nurture for better mental health and a more fulfilling life.3 Therefore, setting goals based on these can help you in your recovery. The following five points discuss these five pillars of good mental health.
1. A Strong Support Network
Social connection is vital for your mental well-being. Socializing reduces stress and anxiety, as well as boosts immunity and improves mood.4 Therefore, spending time with friends and family, helping those around you, or volunteering your time to a good cause can work wonders for improving your well-being.
2. Adequate Amount of Rest
3. A Balanced Diet
As it turns out, there is truth behind the saying, “You are what you eat.” This comes down to how the gut and brain are directly connected. Aim to eat brain-friendly foods, particularly those that contain omega-3 fatty acids, such as nuts, seeds, salmon, soybeans, and so on. Additionally, balance your diet with fruits, vegetables, and proteins as they are rich in antioxidants, reduce inflammation, and boost communication between areas of the brain.
4. Regular Exercise
Physical activity, such as a brisk walk, yoga, dance, or fitness training, releases mood-boosting chemicals in the body. These chemicals, called “endorphins,” reduce the stress hormone and help bring anxiety and depression down.
5. Mindfulness and Relaxation
Mindfulness and relaxation help us to bring our attention to the present moment instead of spiralling into a negativity cycle. For instance, deep breathing is scientifically proven to improve mood, focus, and attention.6 A simple deep breathing exercise is to sit or lie down comfortably, inhale deeply through your nose, hold for a few seconds, then exhale through your mouth. Placing your hand on your stomach and allowing yourself to feel your diaphragm rise and fall can enhance the relaxation effects of deep breathing. You can build this practice into your daily schedule or use it whenever you feel stress levels rise.
Now that you have an idea of what mental health treatment goals look like, you may be wondering how you can go about setting them. Let’s discuss this next.
How to Create Mental Health Goals
If you are undergoing mental health treatment and want to know how to create mental health goals, the following step-by-step process can help. However, a mental health professional can also talk you through the best goals for your situation and needs in an assessment or initial therapy session.
1. Reflect on Your Current State of Mind
The first step in setting mental health goals is to identify your moods, stress level, emotional state, coping mechanisms, and the areas you want to work on. This will help you pinpoint the areas you want to target and mental health objectives for treatment.
2. Set SMART Goals
As you set goals, make sure they focus on SMART areas (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound). The SMART framework is often considered the “gold standard” for goal-setting for mental health recovery, as it helps create clear and achievable objectives. We describe the SMART technique in detail later in this article.
3. Track Your Progress
Once you’ve identified your mental health goals, it’s time to monitor progress. For example, if you are getting treatment for anxiety, depression, or PTSD and your goal is to improve self-esteem, monitor how you respond to daily stressors, criticism, and challenges. You can do this by keeping a simple tracker or a journal to rate your mood, habits, and confidence, and compare it with previous progress.
4. Celebrate Milestones
Every win matters in mental health treatment, so make sure you celebrate every milestone – not matter how small. You can do so in ways that mean something to you. For example, take some personal time, have a bath, buy yourself something nice. Your hard work deserves a reward.
The next section discusses how to set SMART goals for mental health in more detail.
SMART Goals for Mental Health Treatment
The SMART framework is a set of principles that can help you set clear and effective mental health goals. Setting SMART goals for mental health is an approach mental health professionals often use as it tends to bring about positive results.
The following steps outline how to use the SMART framework for personal mental health goal planning.
1. S: Make Your Goal “Specific”
Be specific and clear in your goals. Ask yourself what exactly it is you want to accomplish. For instance, instead of setting a goal for simply “Feeling better,” set one for focusing on healthier lifestyle habits. For example, “I will make a weekly diet and sleep plan for improved well-being.”
2. M: Make Your Goal “Measurable”
Make sure you can track your progress, as seeing achievements can motivate you to continue in your mental health goals. For instance, while setting a goal to improve your mood might be too vague, creating a goal to improve your outcomes on a self-report measure is more specific and measurable. Likewise, while saying that you want to exercise isn’t measurable, making a plan to spend 30 minutes outdoors every day is.
3. A: Make Your Goal “Achievable”
Your goals should be realistic – otherwise, you may be setting yourself up for failure. Don’t try to achieve too much, too soon. If your goal is too large to reach in a realistic timeframe, break it down into smaller steps and make sure you have the resources and time to work towards it. For instance, instead of setting big challenges such as recovering from a mental health issue in a month, you could aim to feel more comfortable in a specific social situation.
4. R: Make Your Goal “Relevant”
Your goal should be relevant and beneficial. You will want to feel a connection with it. For instance, setting a goal to practice daily mindfulness may be relevant to you because unwinding and spending quality time with yourself can improve attention and focus.
5. T: Make Your Goal “Time-Bound”
Your goal should have a clear and realistic time limit. It cannot go on indefinitely. Setting a clear timeframe can help you maintain motivation and focus. For instance, incorporating mindfulness into your life every day for a month allows you to see the benefits on your well-being at the end of this period.
Creating a Personal Mental Health Action Plan
Creating a mental health action plan requires clarity, focus, and goal defining. For instance, following actions such as the ones listed below and regularly checking in on them can help keep you on track.
- Identify your problems: You can list more than one problem, but it may be best to focus on one right now. For instance, you may be struggling with withdrawal from loved ones, loss of interest, stress, and so on.
- Define your goal(s): These will likely be based on what you’re currently struggling with. For example, you may want to spend more time exercising to boost your mood if you’re struggling with depression or anxiety.
- Make an action plan: How can you take steps towards achieving your goal? For instance, could following the SMART format help?
- Track your progress: Tracking your progress helps keep you motivated and focused on a target. We discuss ways of tracking your goals and progress next.
Setting and Tracking Mental Health Goals
Setting and tracking mental health goals can help you understand what’s working and what’s not in your personal mental health action plan so that you can modify it accordingly. Planners, apps, or calendars are useful tools for tracking progress as they allow you to…
- Log your tasks, accomplishments, and challenges every day
- Review your progress weekly and monthly
- Take time to reflect on your progress, accomplishments, and downfalls
- Identify what’s working and what’s not
- Make adjustments to your plan for better progress
By reviewing your progress in these ways, you can plan for obstacles that may arise in your goal-setting journey. Encountering challenges is common, but knowing how to recognize and manage these is important in recovery. We discuss common challenges
Overcoming Challenges in Setting Mental Health Goals
Therapeutic goal setting for recovery is a powerful step, but it doesn’t come without its challenges. You may encounter bumps in the road in your goal-setting journey. For instance, you may come across stigma, feel a lack of support, or struggle to motivate yourself.
Obstacles such as these can be demotivating and may even cause you to start doubting yourself. However, it’s possible to overcome these obstacles by planning ahead and rewarding yourself. When you reward yourself in meaningful ways, your brain releases a chemical called dopamine, which is a happy hormone that can motivate and encourage you.
Additionally, experiencing a lack of support or stigma can be a big deterrant. Reaching out to friends or joining a support group can help you feel more understood and able to develop healthy ways of coping. Educating yourself on mental health conditions can also help reduce stigma as it allows you to see that these conditions are relatively common – and, importantly, not your fault.
The best way to overcome obstacles on your road to better mental health is by contacting a mental health professional, as they can guide you on the right goals to set and actions to take for your situation. It’s normal to come across challenges, but knowing how to continue progressing is empowering.
Finally, you may not feel at the top of your game every day – and this is OK. Remember to be kind to yourself. Showing yourself compassion can improve resilience, motivation, and mental health in general.
Set Mental Health Goals with Mission Connection
Setting goals for your mental health recovery might feel a little out of your reach right now, but it doesn’t have to. Mission Connection’’s team of trained mental health professionals assist people from the very start of their mental health journey, all the way through to graduating from mental health care. During an assessment and initial therapy session, we can help you pinpoint goals that matter to you – and adapt your treatment program around these.
We can provide:
- Outpatient treatment options, including virtual telehealth to fit your schedule
- Residential treatment at one of our facilities in California, Virginia, and Washington
- Goal setting and personalized mental health action plans
- Therapy with licensed therapists that includes mindfulness, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), emotion-focused therapy, and so on
- Medication reviews
- Group therapy sessions
Call 866-798-3431 to speak with our specialist team about any goal setting or mental health queries you may have. We look forward to being able to support you on your mental health journey.
References
National Alliance on Mental Illness. (2025, March 27). Mental health by the numbers | NAMI. NAMI. https://www.nami.org/about-mental-illness/mental-health-by-the-numbers/
Stewart, V., McMillan, S. S., Hu, J., Ng, R., El-Den, S., O’Reilly, C., & Wheeler, A. J. (2022). Goal planning in mental health service delivery: A systematic integrative review. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.1057915
NHS. (2022, December 28). 5 steps to mental wellbeing. https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/self-help/guides-tools-and-activities/five-steps-to-mental-wellbeing/
Holt-Lunstad, J. (2024). Social connection as a critical factor for mental and physical health: Evidence, trends, challenges, and future implications. World Psychiatry, 23(3), 312–332. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11403199/
Suni, E., & Suni, E. (2024, March 26). Mental health and sleep. Sleep Foundation. https://www.sleepfoundation.org/mental-health
UC Davis Health. (2024, November 27). 10 health benefits of meditation and how to focus on mindfulness. Cultivating Health. https://health.ucdavis.edu/blog/cultivating-health/10-health-benefits-of-meditation-and-how-to-focus-on-mindfulness-and-compassion/2022/12
