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:
“Up a lazy river by the old mill run, that lazy, lazy river in the noonday sun.”
—Sidney Arodin, U.S. songwriter. “Lazy River,” Peer International Corp. (1931)
“American feminists have generally stressed the ways in which men and women should be equal and have therefore tried to put aside differences.... Social feminists [in Europe] ... believe that men and society at large should provide systematic support to women in recognition of their dual role as mothers and workers.”
—Sylvia Ann Hewitt (20th century)
“Personal size and mental sorrow have certainly no necessary proportions. A large bulky figure has a good a right to be in deep affliction, as the most graceful set of limbs in the world. But, fair or not fair, there are unbecoming conjunctions, which reason will pa tronize in vain,—which taste cannot tolerate,—which ridicule will seize.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)
“Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)