We have witnessed the ongoing strain on our traditional mental health care system over the past five years. There is a growing need for help across communities, where help seekers are experiencing nuanced mental health challenges. From suicidality, stress, bullying, substance misuse, to family planning, systems navigation, and relationship woes, getting access to a mental health service and making that first appointment can feel insurmountable.
For many, the process of accessing a mental health service is even more challenging during their time of need, due to lengthy intake processes and changes in providers. Recent data indicate that our current national network of healthcare providers is only meeting 26% of the actual need, and an additional 6,200 providers would need to be hired to help alleviate this shortage.
The pathway to expanding the vital workforce needed is quite challenging and might take too long to provide sustainable relief to the system. Obstacles like a lack of funding and low reimbursement rates for services continue to dissuade some providers from specializing in mental health. Even earlier in the process, obtaining clinical degrees or licensure is not always possible. Salary disparities across systems cause many qualified providers to seek out administrative roles or private sector positions that may be more flexible and better for their well-being but are inaccessible for many of our help seekers.
What remains is an ongoing need for affirming and accessible services for communities. This is an opportunity to truly highlight the value and therapeutic benefits of lived experience to carry us through this gap.
Why Peer Support Is Essential to Modern Mental Health Care
Peer support bridges the clinical with the essential by bringing lived experience, pairing individuals seeking care with trained advocates who have navigated similar challenges and can offer guidance grounded in empathy, trust, and real-world understanding. At Vibrant Emotional Health (Vibrant), we have prioritized peer roles across all service lines: crisis hotlines, youth education, and family and youth wellness programming. As an organization with both deep crisis-focused expertise and a breadth of preventive programming, we know how essential it is for every individual to receive thoughtful and compassionate care, no matter the trauma or complexity. To us, this means paving a pathway via a supportive framework that centers the individual’s expressed needs rather than prescribing treatment at the outset.
Building trust is vital to retention in care. Therefore, co-creation and collaboration are vital for the desired outcomes and impact of services. Task-sharing is a viable option to meet the needs of our communities and uplift essential and valued health workers to bridge the visible treatment gaps.
Peer specialists are globally recognized as qualified non-specialists or paraprofessionals who can offer low-intensity mental health support. Instead of relying on traditional mental health specialists to provide support, much of the care can happen within communities, led by those who have successfully navigated these systems and thrived.
In the United States, the peer support role continues to be underutilized due to the lack of understanding regarding what this role is, as well as the ongoing over-professionalization of mental health services. With greater adoption of the peer support model through increased funding, we have an opportunity to turn the tide on a widening gap in care.
Embedding Lived Experience Across Crisis, Youth, and Family Systems
Peer support strengthens mental health systems by embedding lived experience across prevention, crisis response, youth development, and family engagement, and offering scalable solutions.
At Vibrant, the peer support role is integrated throughout multiple areas – beginning with family advocacy. Vibrant pioneered New York City’s first Family Support Program and Parent Resource Center, establishing a model that centers caregivers as informed partners and advocates for their children. In crisis services, there is dedicated peer support within NYC 988 and HOPEline to ensure that individuals in distress can connect with trained peers whose lived experience helps reduce stigma, encourage hope, and foster continued engagement.
Youth peer advocacy is integrated into community-based programs such as the Adolescent Skills Centers and the Queens Affirming Youth and Family Alliance, where peer advocates support young people through shared experience rather than solely through clinical intervention. The Children’s Coordinated Services Initiative is a collective of NYC-based organizations, driven by Vibrant, who come together to center the role of family and youth peer advocates within youth-serving systems. Peer navigation within family and youth programs further helps individuals access services, stay connected to care, and build long-term self-advocacy skills.
Together, these approaches demonstrate how peer integration functions not as a singular program, but as a workforce and delivery strategy that enhances care quality, strengthens trust, and addresses gaps in access across the mental health system. Grounded in shared experience, peers encourage sustainable healing and growth by focusing on what individuals can achieve rather than what they lack. Through a combination of structured, evidence-informed models and flexible, community-driven support, peer-led care helps people build their inherent strengths to create meaningful, lasting change.
Moving Forward with Peer Support at the Center
Peer specialists do rely on their lived experience to engage help seekers, which highlights a need for specialized supervision, whereby clear discussions around well-being and self-care are encouraged. Such supervision helps with professional development for peer specialists by amplifying the unique healing power of their stories. Additional career pathways, such as Peer Support Supervisors, Advisors, and Leadership positions, are critical in showcasing structural integration of and respect for peers.
Across the sector of wellness support services, many are investing in this scope of expertise, as it brings humanity to the work by lending the living story the same credence as credentials. The marriage of both lenses of expertise deepens the value of any organization and its impact on those it serves by highlighting peers as key players within the spectrum of care.
Peer support services are uniquely tailored to touch the lives of those in need from the lens of not just an ally but that of a companion in experience–a person who has been there. These individuals exude that perfectly seasoned quality that cannot be taught. Their work and life stories serve as the key agents in building trust and shepherding individuals in need across bridges to hope. It is our hope that other organizations consider adding these important roles to their staffing.
Jantra Coll, PsyD, is Vice President of Community Programs, and Johnell Lawrence, MSW, is Assistant Vice President of Community Engagement, at Vibrant Emotional Health.
