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:
“Research shows clearly that parents who have modeled nurturant, reassuring responses to infants’ fears and distress by soothing words and stroking gentleness have toddlers who already can stroke a crying child’s hair. Toddlers whose special adults model kindliness will even pick up a cookie dropped from a peer’s high chair and return it to the crying peer rather than eat it themselves!”
—Alice Sterling Honig (20th century)
“There is a period near the beginning of every man’s life when he has little to cling to except his unmanageable dream, little to support him except good health, and nowhere to go but all over the place.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“see the shaky future grow familiar
in the pinched, indigenous faces
of these thoroughbred mental cases,
twice my age and half my weight.
We are all old-timers,
each of us holds a locked razor.”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“It is not stressful circumstances, as such, that do harm to children. Rather, it is the quality of their interpersonal relationships and their transactions with the wider social and material environment that lead to behavioral, emotional, and physical health problems. If stress matters, it is in terms of how it influences the relationships that are important to the child.”
—Felton Earls (20th century)