peer support

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a form of mental health and recovery support in which people with lived experience of mental illness, addiction, or trauma offer emotional, practical, and informational assistance to others facing similar challenges, based on the principles of mutual respect, shared experience, and the insight that only someone who has been through comparable difficulties can fully understand certain aspects of recovery; peer support specialists — also called peer support workers or recovery coaches — may be employed within mental health services, substance use treatment programmes, or community organisations, and increasingly within inpatient and crisis settings; evidence demonstrates that peer support improves engagement with services, reduces hospitalisation, and enhances hope and self-efficacy; the peer support movement has been central to the consumer-survivor-ex-patient movement's challenge to professional authority in mental health care