Peer Support in Mental Health
Peer support can occur within, outside or around traditional mental health services and programs, between two people or in groups. Peer support is a key concept in the Recovery approach. Consumers/clients of mental health programs have also formed non-profit self-help organizations, and serve to support each other and to challenge associated stigma and discrimination. Organizations that offer peer support services for people with mental health problems include Fountain House, Emotions Anonymous, the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA), GROW, Wildflowers' Movement and Recovery International. The role of peer workers in mental health services was the subject of a conference in London in April 2012, jointly organised by the Centre for Mental Health and the NHS Confederation. Research has shown that peer-run self-help groups (also known as Consumer-Operated Services Programs) yield improvement in psychiatric symptoms resulting in decreased hospitalization, larger social support networks and enhanced self-esteem and social functioning. Organizations such as the Samaritans, Nightline, and Aware provide peer support to people in emotional distress.
Read more about this topic: Peer Support
Famous quotes containing the words peer, support, mental and/or health:
“I peer eagerly into every gap in a fence of a zipper.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Because the young child feels with such intensity, he experiences sorrows that seem inconsolable and losses that feel unbearable. A precious toy gets broken or a good-bye cannot be endured. When this happens, words like “sad” or “disappointed” seem a travesty because they cannot possibly capture the enormity of the child’s loss. He needs a loving adult presence to support him in his pain but he does not want to be talked out of it.”
—Alicia F. Lieberman (20th century)
“Women ought to feel a peculiar sympathy in the colored man’s wrong, for, like him, she has been accused of mental inferiority, and denied the privileges of a liberal education.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)
“All health and success does me good, however far off and withdrawn it may appear; all disease and failure helps to make me sad and does me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me or I with it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)