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Peer Support and Case Management: Complementary, Not Interchangeable
Across the behavioral health field, two frontline roles increasingly shape how services are delivered: case managers and peer support specialists. Both work directly with individuals navigating mental health challenges, substance use recovery, housing instability, and community reintegration. Both...
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Peer Supervision: A Model for Enhanced Vocational and Emotional Support
For many of us in the field of mental health and substance use disorder, the idea of peer services feels like a new and welcome change that brings with it equity and a workforce with a more complete perspective on lived experience. Many people are surprised to learn that peer services have a...
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Peering In: A Look at Mental Health Peer Providers and How They Help People Recover
I believe that recovery is possible. Not just for me, but for EVERYONE. Does this mean that everyone recovers? No, because not everyone is taught the skills to recover. Also, once a person learns the skills, they must choose to use them. My peer specialist colleagues and I can give you a flashlight...
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Addiction Recovery: The Role of Peer and Alumni Support
Behavioral health care has made meaningful progress in evidence-based treatment, yet one of the most persistent challenges remains what happens after discharge. Recovery does not end when a person leaves residential care. In many ways, that is when real-world pressure begins. The transition...
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How Psychiatric Office Support Directly Improves Mental Health Treatment Outcomes
When we evaluate why a patient improves or doesn't, we tend to focus on the method itself. Was the medication the right fit? Was the TMS protocol appropriately calibrated? Was the ketamine dosage well-tolerated? These are the right clinical questions to ask. But the quality of support surrounding...
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Strengthening Peer Services Through Partnership
The expansion of peer-delivered services is one of the most significant developments in behavioral health over the past decade. What was once a rare, little-known role has become mainstream. A 2024 report by the Peer Recovery Center of Excellence estimated that more than 100,000 individuals...
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Peer Services in Behavioral Health: New York State Leading the Way
Individuals with lived experience with mental illness have a unique perspective that can play a crucial role in helping others on the path to recovery. A key facet of reaching and forming bonds with individuals seeking support is the strong connection peer support workers offer. We have made...
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Meeting Crisis With Connection: The Power of Peer Specialists on Mobile Crisis Teams
Over the past several years, New York City has increasingly shifted toward community-based responses to behavioral health crises. In the past, individuals experiencing psychiatric emergencies were often limited to hospital emergency departments or interactions with law enforcement. While those...
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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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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...
