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Overcoming Barriers to Integrating Peer Support in Mental Healthcare Systems
Peer support is one of the most promising approaches in behavioral health, demonstrating measurable improvements in recovery outcomes for people living with serious mental illness. Yet despite decades of research and growing policy support, peer specialists remain underutilized across many...
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Centered in Lived Experiences: Peers Reshape Engagement in California’s CARE Court
Living with the symptoms of a serious mental illness can feel isolating and debilitating. It can also breed distrust, which makes it difficult to accept services and support. These challenges were top of mind when the CARE Act launched in Los Angeles in December 2023, establishing a civil court...
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The Peer Advocate: Role Model, Listener, and Problem Solver for Older Adults
Peer Advocates have changed the way that we practice behavioral healthcare at Service Program for Older People (SPOP) – and have changed the lives of the older adults we treat. SPOP is a community-based behavioral health provider for older adults (55+) based in New York City. We serve...
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Integrating Peer Professionals in Complex Behavioral Health Systems
NYC Health + Hospitals, the nation’s largest municipal health care system and New York City’s largest behavioral health provider, serves individuals with complex behavioral health and social needs including homelessness, justice involvement, and chronic medical conditions. In this landscape,...
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Peer Support in Practice: Workplace Strategies and Professional Development
The field of peer support is quickly gaining prominence and visibility across the domains of behavioral health and substance use services. Georgia was the first state to provide Medicaid-billable mental health peer services in 1999 - it was not until 2012 that Medicaid billing was authorized for...
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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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Supporting Peer Mentoring as a Bridge to Campus Belonging
Across colleges and universities, students are experiencing increasing mental health challenges while simultaneously navigating the social, academic, and developmental demands of campus life. For many students, the transition to college represents their first time living independently, managing...
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The Value of Being Seen: Acknowledging the Importance of Shared Identities and Lived Experiences
It is a well-known fact that our traditional mental health care system has experienced a strain over the past six years. Not only are there ongoing needs for services across communities, but also an ongoing staffing crisis that impedes the successful delivery of those services. Mental health...
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Beyond Boundaries: Oh, the Places Peer Support Can Go!
Peer support has always been bigger than the box systems tried to paint it in. Long before it was codified, credentialed, or added into service plans, it was ordinary folk reaching for one another—standing in the front, behind and to the side of each other sharing hard-earned wisdom, offering...
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Healing, Growth, and Purpose: Becoming a Peer Specialist
On January 14, 1980 (my birthday) I sat at a drafting board at Island Drafting and Technical Institute in Amityville, New York, beginning my journey as a mechanical draftsperson. One thousand hours later, I earned my certification and was placed through the school's employment services at an...
