Revisiting the Rationale and Evidence for Peer Support

By Larry Davidson, PhD, Chyrell Bellamy, MSW, PhD, Mathew Chinman, PhD, Marianne Farkas, ScD, Laysha Ostrow, PhD, Judith A. Cook, PhD, Jessica A. Jonikas, MA, Harvey Rosenthal, Sue Bergeson, Allen S. Daniels, EdD & Mark Salzer, PhD          [Download Resource]

‘To date, over multiple studies have found that peer staff who are working in peer-specific roles are better able to engage people in caring relationships; improve relationships between clients and outpatient providers, thus increasing engagement in non-acute and less costly care; decrease substance use, unmet needs, and demoralization; and increase hope, empowerment, self-efficacy, social functioning, quality of and satisfaction with life, and activation for self-care’

Key Content Areas:

• Rationale for peer support
• The evidence for peer support
• Patient-care outcomes

Why would these kinds of gains not be worthy of funding? Presumably because they have yet to be connected directly to reductions in the negative outcomes of arrest, incarceration, and violence. But these poor outcomes are more reflective of societal and systemic failures than of mental illness per se. They are due primarily to long-standing discrimination that has resulted in a lack of parity in funding for community-based mental health care..