What is Peer Support?

Peer support is a way of giving and receiving help based on mutuality, respect, and shared responsibility. Peer support includes offering emotional support, but also sharing knowledge, practicing skills, and providing tangible help like finding resources or connecting to new opportunities. Peer support specialists are helping professionals who have personal, lived experience that drives our work. That means when you talk to a peer support specialist, you're talking to someone who gets it because they've been there.

Peer support is not a clinical intervention or treatment like therapy or psychiatry. While peer support specialists are professionals with training and education, what makes their expertise unique is how they are trained to talk about and draw from their own lived experience in order to build relationships and help others feel hope, realize opportunities for growth, and build their network of supportive people, services, and resources. 

Find more resources on peer support here.

Peer support specialists support you while you're figuring out what works and doesn't work for you. So, for example, a peer support specialist won't be a tutor, but they will help you practice strategies to organize your class work. They'll understand how it feels if you forget assignments, even though you're trying your hardest to keep up. A peer support specialist can't tell you how a specific medication works, but they will share their experience deciding to use (or not use) medications, work with you to identify your own values and concerns about medication, and help navigate insurance to find a psychiatrist that's a good fit.