I was thinking back recently on my role as a peer support specialist and its definition. When I started in the role, I researched it and I wasn’t really able to find a clear definition on the web. This was frustrating. After nine months and additional education, I thought I would share my thoughts on this role, why it exist, and most important, why it helps.
Peer Support was born out of a shift from a medical model of treatment to a recovery model for those who suffer mental illness and substance abuse. To understand this, we have to define the difference in the medical model and the recovery model.
The Medical Model is a supportive model when it comes to addressing symptoms. The patient has symptoms and medication is adjusted and additional therapy is offered until symptoms subside. The medical model definition of recovery or wellness is the patient no longer has symptoms so severe that it requires hospitalization or additional treatment. Now their is a problem with the medical model. Myself and many of my peers believe a definition of recovery is a appropriate satisfactory contentment in life(there’s more, but this is put into a very short sentence).
When I have recovery, I manage my symptoms better. So when questions are raised and emphasis is on how the patient will reintegrate back into society, the workforce, have better relationships, and self-manage stress is their environment, the medical model ask only “is the patient having symptoms?”.
The recovery model attempts to answer these other aspects that are just as vital to mental wellness and it is a closer definition than the medical model for me and many of my peers as to what recovery is. Components of the medical model are always a must for recovery, but the recovery model increases the ability to self-regulate and increases overall quality of life for myself and many of my peers.
That’s where we fit in as peer specialist. To understand what it is that we do takes me back to a time and another place in my life, not with a peer, but with a doctor(what?!).
The year was 2000 and I had just been released from the Norfolk regional center. My psychiatrist was a excellent. He was one of those doctors that you see and say to yourself “he is in the zone”. Patients loved him, staff loved him because he was so effective. At that time in my life, what gave me some relief from my symptoms was studying math and astrophysics. After a couple of visits, something happened that I couldn’t have dreamed of. My doctor told me astrophysics was also one of his hobbies! So when we had our weekly sessions, we discussed things time travel, black holes, and gravitation. For the brief period of time in his office I no longer had delusions, depression, the trauma from the loss of my old life, we were just 2 people talking(wow). I noticed that this feeling of wellness didn’t always leave when I walked out of his office, but would stay with me for a few days. He knew I was very sick and we would discuss meds and symptoms for short periods, but the focus was on something awesome. It was mutuality. Mutuality, the ability to relate to shared experiences of others.
Peers provide mutuality to the patient on a cognitive level of support and shared experiences that can also provide motivation and hope. Questions are answered on everything from our past recovery to starting a blog. Our role includes family sessions where explaining our experience with treatments that apply to us and doctor consultations where we can answer questions and share our insight on treatment. We also offer our views to coworkers without mental illness to assist them with their job.
The peer specialist position requires work and dedication. It is a calling for those of us who gains recovery by providing hope to others and reaching out in this way. Our duty is not only to our patients, but a general responsibility to promote wellness, advocacy, and recovery to those who encounter us in our role.
Keep it real, keep it true,
Rod
www.mentalhope.com
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June 22, 2008 at 15:41
Carol
Hi, I wish my DH was able to find some peer support. It’s very hard, when 90% of the people who know us don’t have any idea that he has been dealing with a mental health struggle and treat him as if there is nothing wrong–or worse, that he’s very lazy, and the other 10% are either doctors, therapists or other patients. And it seems like the other patients that he tends to encounter are worse off than he is, or living in supported housing or whatever, and there is so little in common. I think it would be wonderful if my DH could talk to someone who has been where he’s been and come out of it, too…..more or less–
Your blog is very thought-provoking, thanks very much!
July 23, 2009 at 15:41
Lex Douvasa
Hello there:
Wow what an interesting post! I have recently been doing some exploration into the difference in duties between peer mentors in the United States and in other recovery-centered systems such as the United Kingdom and New Zealand. In the U.S., peer mentors and support groups seem focused on re-educating consumers on a functional level, whereas in the United Kingdom peer counselors often take on the role of what doctors do here! It is a very different system of peer support!
I wonder if you might be willing to speak more on the issue of what your duties are as a peer support counselor or how you think it is more effective in a recovery-model to have peer support?
Also considering your experience as both a mental healthcare consumer and a mental healthcare provider, I wonder if you might be able to speak to the differences required from the provider role and the consumer role between recovery practices and medical practices?
I recently heard a hydraulic metaphor related to recovery from Larry Drain where medical approaches treat a mental illness as a fluid imbalance in your body, and with the right amount of stubborn dedication and experimentation with medications a practitioner hopes to restore balance; whereas the recovery model sees a more holistic, all-encompassing approach as more effective. For it is not realistic to treat a chemical imbalance in isolation of the consumer’s environment (their relationships, stresses, concerns, etc.).
I also wonder if, given your expertise, I might be able to quote you in my own blog about the recovery movement, the Mental Health Recovery Blog? I would of course site you and link back to your blog, but if you weren’t comfortable about it no worries at all, I would very much love to hear your take on things even if you wouldn’t like to be quoted or if you’d like it to remain here!
If some of your readers are unfamiliar with the recovery movement, there are some informational resources here:
1) What is Mental Health Recovery
2) Mental Health Recovery Model
And of course the Wiki is actually fairly informative.
One of the larger criticisms I often hear on recovery is professionals worrying that it will change or diminish the role of the professional in treatment, often this is associated or blamed on the rise of a peer counseling network. I tend to be in the camp that argues the role is not diminishing, it is merely changing to focus on more specialized expertise while peer mentors take on the more relatable, empathetic aspects of therapy…but I could be way wrong, what do you think?
If you wouldn’t mind, if you have the time to respond I would very much love to quote you in my blog about the recovery movement, the Mental Health Recovery Blog. I will of course reference back to you in the posting but if you are not comfortable with being quoted then I’d love to just hear your take here! I would very much value your opinion considering I am trying to get inputs from all sides of the mental healthcare field (practitioners, consumers, advocates, family members, etc.) in order to get a meaningful dialogue going as to what the mental health recovery movement really means.
I look forward to talking with you more in the future if this sparks your interest!
All the best,
Lex
MHCD Research and Evaluations