How to prepare for a mental health appointment
A short list, filled in beforehand, that turns a scarce ten minutes into a useful ten minutes.
Ten minutes is not very long. It is long enough to have a useful conversation about your mood, but only if the first six of them are not spent reconstructing a timeline out of fragments.
Preparing for this appointment is not about rehearsing. It is about arriving with the handful of facts you will otherwise be asked to produce from memory, at exactly the moment memory is least cooperative.
The five things you will be asked
Almost every version of this appointment reaches for the same information. You can have it ready on one piece of paper.
1. How long. The single hardest question in the room, because low periods blur. An honest “since about March, worse since June” is far more useful than “a while?”
2. What it is stopping you doing. Work, sleep, eating, seeing people, leaving the house, answering messages. Function is what a clinician can actually assess, and it is the part people most often leave out because it feels like complaining.
3. Sleep and appetite. Whether they have changed, and in which direction. These come up every time.
4. What you have already tried. Including the informal things — cutting down drinking, exercising, talking to someone, an app, time off. It tells them where you already are.
5. What you want from the appointment. You are allowed to want something specific. “I would like to try talking therapy before medication” is a legitimate opening position, not a demand.
Write the first sentence down
Whatever else you prepare, prepare the opening. Decide it in advance and say it in minute one — there is a whole guide on that sentence, because it does more work than everything else combined.
Bring a record, not a recollection
This is the part that changes the appointment most and takes the least effort.
If you have been tracking your mood at all — even loosely, even just a few notes a week — bring it. A doctor can read a six-week slope in seconds. It replaces the vaguest part of the conversation with something concrete, and it quietly signals that this is not a passing bad day; you have been paying attention.
If you use Nagi, the doctor report is built exactly for this: the timeline, the direction and the medication history on one page, printable or on your phone. But a note on your phone works. The format matters much less than having anything at all.
Worth knowing: your GP may also run a short questionnaire of their own. If it feels familiar from weekly check-ins, that is not a coincidence — clinicians use similar tools. The only skill it requires is answering honestly, which is easier if you have been practising on yourself.
Practical things that help
Book a longer appointment if you can. Many practices offer double appointments; some will give you one if you say it is for your mental health. It is worth asking when you book rather than discovering the constraint mid-sentence.
Take someone with you, if that would help — either into the room, or just as far as the waiting area so that leaving is harder.
Write down what is said. You will not retain it. Names of medications, what to expect, when to come back, what to do if things get worse. Ask them to repeat anything you miss.
Book the follow-up before you leave. “Come back if it does not improve” is a much weaker plan than a date in the diary. It also removes the need to work up the courage a second time.
What not to bother doing
Do not try to arrive with a diagnosis, or to prove your case. You do not need to establish that you are unwell enough to be there. And do not rehearse to the point of a script — the appointment will not follow it, and having a script to lose makes going off it feel like failing.
The preparation is a page of facts and one opening sentence. That is genuinely all of it.
The short version
One sheet: how long, what it stops you doing, sleep and appetite, what you have tried, what you want. One prepared opening line. Any record you already have. Then let them lead, write down the answers, and leave with a date.
— Richard MacLean
Related: how to describe depression to a doctor and when ten minutes is not enough time.
Nagi is a mental health companion, not a medical device, and nothing here is medical advice. If you are struggling, please reach out to a professional or someone you trust.