How to keep colonists sane?

[Gandhi]

So I got the game recently and I'm pretty sure I understand most of it but every colony I start will always end the same way. My people just lose their minds and die.

I've tried building Joy stuff and planting flowers, etc. Am I missing something here? Or is there just always going to be people going insane.

[Demon of Razgriz]

It is hard to help if we don't know what their complaints are. Look in their tabs and tell us what they mainly complain about, then we can help.

[Rous]

Define "Lose their minds"...? Are you just getting unlucky and everything breaks berserk? Moods should tell you a breakdown (Pun intended!) of things that you can try to fix, to keep their mood up. Dirty environment is a heavy hitter, mood-wise, for instance. Joy stuff only helps so much, it'l kep them filled with joy but that's only a +10 or so, so it's not a cure-all. Just check out what's bothering them and see if you can fix it.

[GuessMDK]

Click their needs tab and try fix the negative ones. Like slept in the cold or slept outside. They stack and will kill your colony.

You also want to stack good mood buffs, like making a great dining area and having your colonists have their own rooms that are atleast decent. Once you get a decent cook, make fine meals and lavish meals once you have an abundance of food.
You had the right idea with flower pots, but make sure they arent awful quailty.

In fact, if you build something and its not atleast normal quality, deconstruct and make another. The first few day its ok to have low quality, but after that, it needs to be addressed.

Some people WILL always be insane and have a higher chance of breaking. Look at the character tab and look at thet traits. People like pyromaniacs or depressive or chemical fascination are going to give you problems. Gay, and any thing that effects the colonists physical appearance (pretty, ugly) will also effect their mood, but not nearly as bad as the first 3.

If you get the warning about a person being a major risk for mental break, just examine their need tab and try to fix the bad ones. It might even be as easy as drafting a person and marching them to your impressive and spacious dinning hall for a few minutes of forced grandeur viewing.

[Swirler]

The mood thing is kind of a combination of factors that amounts to mood breaks and wanders/binges that can cause a death spiral.
There are some occasions where you just won't be able to do a whole lot to stop it if the storytellers/difficulty just dislike you for some reason.

The game gives you hints from what causes each mood penalty, simply going through the common mood penalties and eliminating them is the most obvious method if in doubt.

1. Checking the pawns actually have joy as part of their daily schedule is good. A little joy activity early in the day makes best use of the joy. Avoid having too much of their schedule on "work" for too long if you can. But by all means work the colonists with high mood a little more.
2. Tables are usually cheap to make, have some of those scattered around the base (with a stool to sit on ofc) helps cut down on "ate without a table".
3. Temperature management, this is more specific to the type of map you play on but if your pawns are sleeping in cold or heat then you've screwed something up. Making use of constructed vents will help your heaters/coolers keep more bedrooms heated/cooled and save on resources.
(You can use the steam vents as heating for the first cold weather you have to deal with, this comes down to base design and placement early though. Just watch out for overheating the room though)
(For hot seasons have your colonists work during the night when it's cooler, for cold seasons have them work more in the day when it's warmer. Helps early on when you don't always have the best clothing for the weather.)
4. Having a good construction colonist is really useful early in the game, with better beds and more comfortable chairs you can get some extra comfort for colonists that may be at risk of mood problems.
5. Have an art station room, an art sculpting table with a cloth armchair can help calm down some upset colonists. Simply install good art they make in the same room for more of a bonus to their mood. Sells to a variety of traders for a fair profit as well.
6. A nice dining room and a nice recreation room will add some bonuses to mood. I like to throw a few horseshoe pins around the colony to stop the colonists from having to travel too far to get their joy doseage.
7. On top of the last one, avoid sending colonists into "ugly" areas for too long, that means miners and colonists into bloody battlefields. Try and get less colonists hauling/burying/chopping up dead bodies if you can. Steer away from harvesting organs from prisoners until your colony is reasonably happy.
8. Pay attention to the colonist character traits, you want colonists that have bonsues to mood. Colonists with things like mental break threshold increased will give you a hard time early in the game. Slower work speed can be dealt with, a mental break cannot.
9. Stagger the sleep patterns if you can. Having all the colonists asleep at the same time looks nice but leaves your base with an obvious vulnerable point in time each day. Avoid sending tired colonists into battle. I've found splitting the sleep schedule into 2 "4 hour" slots perfect for avoiding sleep penalties for combat.
10. Avoid killing relatives if you can. The mood penalty is quite long for losing loved ones and the colonist who kills the relative of another will probably never be forgiven, you get some strong social penalties for killing loved ones. Although sometimes there's not a whole lot you can do to avoid this, keep it in mind.
11. Animal bonded deaths are a fairly large penalty you can avoid by keeping your animals out of combat if you can.
12. Drug addictions are a headache. Avoid those drug oriented colonists if you have to sell drugs for a living. They just add far too much micromanagement tasks to handle, on top of the penalties for withdrawal symptoms and long term health problems that happen.

[GuessMDK]

Originally posted by Mad hatters in jeans:

The mood thing is kind of a combination of factors that amounts to mood breaks and wanders/binges that can cause a death spiral.
There are some occasions where you just won't be able to do a whole lot to stop it if the storytellers/difficulty just dislike you for some reason.

The game gives you hints from what causes each mood penalty, simply going through the common mood penalties and eliminating them is the most obvious method if in doubt.

1. Checking the pawns actually have joy as part of their daily schedule is good. A little joy activity early in the day makes best use of the joy. Avoid having too much of their schedule on "work" for too long if you can. But by all means work the colonists with high mood a little more.
2. Tables are usually cheap to make, have some of those scattered around the base (with a stool to sit on ofc) helps cut down on "ate without a table".
3. Temperature management, this is more specific to the type of map you play on but if your pawns are sleeping in cold or heat then you've screwed something up. Making use of constructed vents will help your heaters/coolers keep more bedrooms heated/cooled and save on resources.
(You can use the steam vents as heating for the first cold weather you have to deal with, this comes down to base design and placement early though. Just watch out for overheating the room though)
(For hot seasons have your colonists work during the night when it's cooler, for cold seasons have them work more in the day when it's warmer. Helps early on when you don't always have the best clothing for the weather.)
4. Having a good construction colonist is really useful early in the game, with better beds and more comfortable chairs you can get some extra comfort for colonists that may be at risk of mood problems.
5. Have an art station room, an art sculpting table with a cloth armchair can help calm down some upset colonists. Simply install good art they make in the same room for more of a bonus to their mood. Sells to a variety of traders for a fair profit as well.
6. A nice dining room and a nice recreation room will add some bonuses to mood. I like to throw a few horseshoe pins around the colony to stop the colonists from having to travel too far to get their joy doseage.
7. On top of the last one, avoid sending colonists into "ugly" areas for too long, that means miners and colonists into bloody battlefields. Try and get less colonists hauling/burying/chopping up dead bodies if you can. Steer away from harvesting organs from prisoners until your colony is reasonably happy.
8. Pay attention to the colonist character traits, you want colonists that have bonsues to mood. Colonists with things like mental break threshold increased will give you a hard time early in the game. Slower work speed can be dealt with, a mental break cannot.
9. Stagger the sleep patterns if you can. Having all the colonists asleep at the same time looks nice but leaves your base with an obvious vulnerable point in time each day. Avoid sending tired colonists into battle. I've found splitting the sleep schedule into 2 "4 hour" slots perfect for avoiding sleep penalties for combat.
10. Avoid killing relatives if you can. The mood penalty is quite long for losing loved ones and the colonist who kills the relative of another will probably never be forgiven, you get some strong social penalties for killing loved ones. Although sometimes there's not a whole lot you can do to avoid this, keep it in mind.
11. Animal bonded deaths are a fairly large penalty you can avoid by keeping your animals out of combat if you can.
12. Drug addictions are a headache. Avoid those drug oriented colonists if you have to sell drugs for a living. They just add far too much micromanagement tasks to handle, on top of the penalties for withdrawal symptoms and long term health problems that happen.

All great advice. Id recomend a slight change to the first one tho, 2 hours of ANYTHING in the morning and 2 at night with a sold 12 hour workday is the way to go. They have time to play and eat before work, and have time to play and eat after work. Plus, having 4 hours of anything will allow your less ♥♥♥♥♥♥ pawns to work more instead of being forced to play pool at 85% joy.

It also has the added effect that pawns with a large travel time from their workplace wont have to take away from their sleep time, they quit working and then go eat and relax.

Forcing joy time should only be used in emergencies.