If you've ever heard the expression "Walk a mile in my shoes," you know the essence of peer support services. Peer support empowers people living with mental health challenges to receive help from someone who's "been there."
Who is a Peer Recovery Specialist?
A Peer Recovery Specialist is someone who utilizes their lived experience of mental health difficulties and their support skills to assist clients in their recovery. They draw on their lived mental health experience to support others; they offer hope and the possibility of recovery to service users, provide emotional and practical support, empower service users in self-management of their recovery, and act as a recovery resource to the service and team.
The Peer Recovery Specialist's role includes:
- Drawing on their lived mental health experience to support others.
- Empathizing with mental health clients.
- Offering emotional and practical support to clients.
- Being present in times of distress.
- Offering hope and the possibility of recovery to clients.
- Empowering clients in self-efficacy and self-management concerning their own recovery.
- Helping reduce stigma.
- Modeling good recovery practice.
- Modeling appropriate disclosure.
Peer Recovery Specialists have:
- Lived experience of mental illness or co-occurring disorder
- A minimum of 2 years of recovery
- A willingness to share their personal recovery story
- Completed an intensive, 40-hour training
- Access to ongoing supervision