At its most basic, Peer Sup­port is one per­son help­ing anoth­er per­son.  When NAMI Lex­ing­ton talks about it, we are talk­ing about Fam­i­ly mem­bers help­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers, Con­sumers of men­tal health ser­vices help­ing oth­er con­sumers, Providers help­ing oth­er providers, and so on.

Peer sup­port can be pret­ty for­mal – as it is in sup­port groups – or more casu­al, such as a phone call to the office where we lis­ten empath­i­cal­ly and help you get resources or even a Face­book mes­sage of hope.

NAMI Lex­ing­ton does not regard peer sup­port as a sub­sti­tute for ther­a­py or med­ica­tion for some­one with a men­tal ill­ness, instead it is a sup­ple­ment and cru­cial to the over­all well­ness of not only that indi­vid­ual, but the com­mu­ni­ty at large.

Receiv­ing and pro­vid­ing sup­port from oth­ers is cen­tral to the human expe­ri­ence. Some­one who is iso­lat­ed, feels shame, or is afraid to tell oth­ers about their prob­lems is not well. Peer Sup­port starts with good lis­ten­ing skills and a “me too” then springs for­ward from there, cre­at­ing a health­i­er, hap­pi­er, and more con­nect­ed individual.

ALL of the pro­grams at NAMI Lex­ing­ton are built on a peer-to-peer foun­da­tion. Edu­ca­tion­al ini­tia­tives like Men­tal Health First Aid and In Our Own Voice are peo­ple from our com­mu­ni­ty, in com­mu­ni­ty, talk­ing to our com­mu­ni­ty.  Sup­port groups are one-on-one, in-per­son sup­port. Even our social media accounts help con­nect peers to one another.

Next week, we’ll explain how Peer Sup­port among con­sumers has cre­at­ed a new­er clas­si­fi­ca­tion of provider, the Ken­tucky Peer Spe­cial­ist. Stay tuned!

SOME RELATED RESOURCES:

Fam­i­ly Sup­port Groups

NAMI Intro­duc­tions

Con­sumer Sup­port Groups

Ken­tucky Con­sumer Conference

Par­tic­i­pa­tion Station

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