Peer Support - Peer Support in Mental Health

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:

    When trouble comes no mother should have to plead guilty alone. The pediatricians, psychologists, therapists, goat herders, fathers, and peer groups should all be called to the bench as well. . . .
    Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)

    Certainly parents play a crucial role in the lives of individuals who are intellectually gifted or creatively talented. But this role is not one of active instruction, of teaching children skills,... rather, it is support and encouragement parents give children and the intellectual climate that they create in the home which seem to be the critical factors.
    David Elkind (20th century)

    Here in the U.S., culture is not that delicious panacea which we Europeans consume in a sacramental mental space and which has its own special columns in the newspapers—and in people’s minds. Culture is space, speed, cinema, technology. This culture is authentic, if anything can be said to be authentic.
    Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)

    I think that carrying a baby inside of you is like running as fast as you can. It feels like finally letting go and filling yourself up to the widest limits.
    —Anonymous Mother. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 2 (1978)