Illness Management and Recovery / IMR-A16-4
Asking for Accommodations — Session activity
Facilitate a structured practice of asking for accommodations with preparation, reflection, and an agreed closing.
30 minutes · Session guide · Mental health professionals
Fictional example: Casey understands appointments better with a written summary.
Use within your training and assessment of readiness. Accommodations can reduce environmental barriers rather than demanding more endurance.
0–5 min | Agree on purpose and fit
Explain the educational scope. Ask what would be useful, check readiness and access needs, and establish choices to observe, adapt, or pass. Use an ordinary example; do not solicit trauma narratives.
5–10 min | Orient with an example
Accommodations can reduce environmental barriers rather than demanding more endurance. Fictional example: Casey understands appointments better with a written summary. Ask what is observed and what remains uncertain.
10–20 min | Practice and compare
Draft a request for written information, quieter space, flexible timing, or another personally relevant support. Offer quiet individual work, a supported conversation, or an observing role. Compare two possible responses without evaluating people as right or wrong.
20–25 min | Reflect on meaning
What change would improve access to care or participation? Ask what fit, what did not fit, and how culture, power, disability access, or external conditions affect the options.
25–30 min | Integrate and close
Invite one optional next step or support request. Orient to the current setting, allow an unfinished question to remain unfinished, and agree how to revisit it. End early or adapt if activation increases.
Adaptations
For a group, use fiction and no compulsory round-robin disclosure. For remote use, allow off-camera reflection and private notes. For brief use, keep one example and one question while retaining opening and closing choices.
Prompts for this resource
- What outcome would make this practice useful?
- What change would improve access to care or participation?
- What adaptation or follow-up is needed?
Conceptual background
Illness Management and Recovery Evidence-Based Practices KIT — SAMHSA
Background on the approach only. Original exercises and wording are by More Than Therapy with AI assistance; the source does not validate or endorse these materials.