Experience bridges gap between individuals and mental health system
Mental illness can be a frightening experience, often causing individuals to withdraw from those around them into isolation and loneliness.
At Region 8, members of our peer support services team are skilled in assisting these individuals through common life experiences. Equipped with a unique capacity to help others, they offer encouragement through stories of their own success, setbacks and roads to recovery. Moreover, they are often able to dispel myths and stigma associated with receiving mental health treatment while connecting individuals with the services to best meet their needs.
Our peer support specialists are more than just people who have been there, though. Going beyond treatment as usual, they use different training and skills to support recovery in conjunction with therapists, community support specialists and medical staff.
Setting our peer support services apart is a focus on resiliency and recovery for individuals with a mental health or substance use disorder diagnosis and their family members. Via person-centered activities, team members help build skills for coping with and managing psychiatric symptoms, substance use issues and the associated challenges individuals face with directing their own recovery. Region 8’s peer support specialists help clients utilize the natural resources around them with the goal of enhancing their community living skills and integration into their local community. This is done by assisting individuals in areas such as education, employment, crisis support, housing and social networking.
Combined with skills learned in formal training, the experience and knowledge of peer support specialists put them in a unique position to offer support. In the same way one person reaches out to another who is going through hard times, peer support specialists provide understanding when many feel alienated and hopeless. These steps provide an important connection, offering hope that recovery is possible.
Peer support is available in all 50 states and is considered to be a best practice by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Research shows that peer support services improve outcomes. Peer support services have been shown to reduce symptoms and hospitalizations, increase social support and participation in the community, decrease length of hospital stays, improve well-being, self-esteem and social functioning and encourage longer-lasting recoveries.
A certified peer support specialist self-identifies as a current or former consumer of mental health or substance use disorder services or as a first degree family member, parent or primary caregiver. They must have at least a high school degree, or equivalent, and complete a Department of Mental Health Certified Peer Support Specialist training and certification.