Peer Supports in Recovery

Abstract

As recovery-oriented practices have become increasingly embraced around the globe, so has the involvement of people in recovery from mental illness, providing peer supports for persons with serious mental illnesses. In this chapter, we review the meaning and often overlooked long-standing history of peer support in mental health. We also discuss the contextual factors that promote or interfere with the work of peer supporters in public mental health settings, based on our personal and research experience implementing peer support and a meta-review of the qualitative research on this topic. We then turn our attention to summarizing the current evidence base for peer support based on recent meta-analyses and systemic reviews devoted to mental and physical health outcomes for adults with serious mental illness. Peer support is a promising addition to the evidence-based practice available to mental health systems and appears to be especially effective at engaging people into care, reducing costly acute care services and substance use, and promoting self-care.