Peer Support 101
What is peer support?
Peer support is typically understood as people who share lived experience of a particular experience (whether that be with oppression, a mental health diagnosis, disability, trauma, neurodivergence, culture, ethnicity, etc.) supporting each other to meet our needs in mutually reciprocal relationships.
Peer support has existed informally in community for as long as we’ve been existing and talking to each other!
It exists inside and outside of the mental health system; inside and outside of the United States (example: The Friendship Bench in Zimbabwe)
The history of peer support includes formal and informal organizations in community, such as The Young Lords 10 Point Health Program, the Black Panthers free acupuncture clinic and Madness Network News psychiatric survivor newspaper.
Peer support values at Project LETS
Partnerships
Non-judgmental
Cultural humility
Anti-oppression and equity
Voluntary, shared power & decision making
Centering connection
Self-determined options for care
Understand their worldview
Multiple ways of sense-making
Informed by Sonny Jane, the Lived Experience Educator