People with lived experience (paired with a liberation-centered political education) can offer a non-coercive, access-centered, justice-oriented, culturally and socially competent form of mental health care: peer support.
We’re looking to build our team of Peer Support Advocates. Apply today.
Our Peer Support Advocates have lived experience with Disability, Madness, trauma, neurodivergence, and/or mental illness. Many are psychiatric survivors and have lived experience navigating medical and psychiatric systems.
We believe peer support is an abolitionist offering, where people with lived experience of Disability, mental illness, madness, and/or neurodivergence support each other and offer a form of accessible, competent, non-carceral, mutual, mental health care. We are here to hold people, be present with them, and hear them. We do not judge, cage, coerce, force, or challenge people’s autonomy and self-determination as human beings. Many power dynamics that exist in the traditional therapeutic model and mental health system are reduced.
Learn more about peer support and our model.
PMHAs are trained to build long-term, 1-1 peer support relationships (with specific skills in: peer counseling, advocacy, crisis response skills). PMHAs also offer rapid crisis response support and short-term drop in sessions. Some PMHA relationships last a few months, and some have lasted years! It’s up to you to determine what type of support you’re looking for.
Here are some examples of what PMHAs do:
Backend logistics: making appointments, doing research, calling insurance companies
Being present: during meetings or appointments
Crisis moments: crisis response support
Skill Building: goal planning, building our toolbox with new resources, skills, and strategies
Sense-Making: exploring how Disability, trauma, mental illness, madness, and/or neurodivergence (and ableism) impact our lives, sense of self, communities, etc.
Regular peer counseling sessions: A safe place to keep coming back to
PMHAs are trained through a 20+ hour abolitionist, Mad Liberation and Disability Justice-centered curriculum.
For now, all PSA services are free.
Please make a donation or become a monthly donor if you’d like to help sustain this program.
