Content area
Full Text
Introduction
Peer support is defined as “people with similar experiences of mental health problems [who] share support with each other” (Burke et al., 2018, p. 1). Service users were the first to advocate for peer support as part of the service user movement (Deegan, 1996; Davidson et al., 2012). Their vision was to promote a more consumer-driven and recovery-oriented mental health system (Burke et al., 2018; Chinman et al., 2006), with interventions offered to people living with mental illness by consumers themselves (Anthony, 1993). Implementing peer support is a concrete example of how organizations have transformed to a recovery orientation (Cyr et al., 2016; Gagne et al., 2018).
Evidence on the benefits of peer support in mental health services has increased in recent years, supporting mental health system transformation (Farkas and Boevink, 2018; Burke et al., 2018). Studies show that peer support interventions have positive impacts on the more traditional mental health outcome measures. Peer support interventions reduce psychiatric symptoms (Cook et al., 2012), rates of days spent in inpatient facilities (Davidson et al., 2012; Sledge et al., 2011), alcohol use (Rowe et al., 2007) and readmission to acute care (Johnson et al., 2018; Sledge et al., 2011). Research also highlights the benefits of peer support with regards to mental health recovery including increased: self-efficacy for people living with mental illness (Mahlke et al., 2017; Burke et al., 2018), service user hopefulness (Cook et al., 2012), empowerment (Burke et al., 2018) and service user engagement (Farkas and Boevink, 2018). Previous research also reports positive effects on peer support workers themselves. Being a peer support worker increases levels of self-esteem (Proudfoot et al., 2012).
Mental health recovery narratives, first-person mental health recovery accounts or recovery stories are increasingly being used in peer support work. Recovery narratives may be shared face-to-face, online, via video or audio, or in written form by trained peers (Cronise et al., 2016; Mancini, 2019; Rennick-Egglestone et al., 2019). Characteristics of recovery narratives include social, political and human rights factors, accounts of supports from both within and outside of mental health services, and less emphasis on illness (Llewellyn-Beardsley et al., 2019). Recovery...