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Addressing Workplace Stigmatization of Peer Colleagues Through Institutional Courage
It is well documented that people with mental illness and substance use disorders (MI/SUD) are stigmatized across all levels of society. So, it is not a surprise that peer support specialists regularly experience stigmatization in the workplace, including negative messages from colleagues about...
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Substance Use Disorders: Supporting Individuals in Early Recovery Through Peer-Led Services
The first days and weeks of recovery from a substance use disorder are among the most precarious in any individual’s health journey. Detoxification has been completed, the immediate crisis has passed, and now the real work begins: rebuilding a life without substances. Yet this is precisely when...
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A Brief History of Peer Support and its “Integration” into Behavioral Healthcare: The Uneasiest of Bedfellows
The proliferation of peer services throughout the behavioral healthcare and social welfare systems has transformed them in ways their progenitors might not have anticipated. The peer support and recovery movements originated in eighteenth-century France under the auspices of Phillipe Pinel and...
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Implementation of Peer Support Roles in Street Medicine and Outreach: Challenges and Possibilities
“We’re not here to belittle you. We’re not here to down talk you. We’re not here to tell you what you should or shouldn’t be doing because that’s not our place.” - Lavaughn Johnson, Peer Navigator at ReVive Center for Housing and Healing At the intersection of homelessness and...
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Lived Experience, Lasting Impact: The Role of Peer Support in Mental Health Intensive Outpatient Programs
Beginning an Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) is not just about addressing symptoms. Many participants enter treatment carrying uncertainty about the process, wondering whether it will work and how they will manage future challenges. Even with strong therapeutic relationships and...
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Peer Specialist, Heal Thyself: Recovery at Age 75 is Not Too Late
The Dream Scene I Psychiatrist X: We’ve got you covered…. Psychiatrist Y: Smothered Psychiatrists X and Y: And if you don’t perform, we’ll make you permanent. Me: Let me out of here and we’ll all be free. Scene 2 Social Worker Z: We’re cancelling the group...
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The Power of a Peer Specialist: Sharing Lived Experience to Support Recovery
“It is people who go through suffering that have an empathy for the suffering of others.” - Mary Robinson The Journey Traveling through suffering is best shared. Learning from suffering and being able to pass on knowledge is a blessing. Working with mental health consumers, I can see...
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Measuring What Matters in Peer Support: Using Competencies and Fidelity to Strengthen the Workforce
Introduction: The Next Phase of Peer Support Development Peer support, a cornerstone of recovery-oriented behavioral healthcare, is a rapidly expanding service model nationally. Delivered by individuals with lived experience of mental health challenges, substance use, trauma, or disability, peer...
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Implementing and Sustaining Peer Support: The Recovery Workforce Learning Collaborative (RWLC)
The integration of peer recovery support specialists represents a significant shift in behavioral health systems. Peers offer unique perspectives and authenticity that strengthen recovery-oriented systems of care (Davidson et al., 2021). Drawing on lived experience, they bring insights that support...
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Supporting Recovery Through Peer Services: How Community-Based Support Helps People Reconnect, Heal, and Thrive
Peer services are often described as supportive, but at their best, they are transformational. Recovery is rarely a straight line, and it rarely happens in isolation. For many people living with mental health or substance use challenges, progress is shaped not only by treatment, but also by...
