The book serves as a guide for all clinicians seeking to improve healthcare outcomes by implementing peer support in the treatment and management of medical and mental health conditions. The book begins with a chapter that describes the importance of peers and how peers are increasingly being utilized to improve medical outcomes. Each chapter opens with an introductory section, include tables and figures, and ends with a summary section for quick reference. Written by experts in the field, this resource covers the clinical implications for peer support in substance misuse, chronic medical conditions, in special populations, and mental illness generally. Each chapter is designed specifically to be accessible for a broad clinical audience of experts and non-experts across medical specialties. Peer Support in Medicine is an excellent resource for all clinicians seeking to improve healthcare outcomes using the gains made by the peer support model, including psychiatrists, psychologists, healthcare researchers, and medical students across specialties, nurses, social workers, and all others.

This pocket resource provides Peer Specialists working with adults in mental health and/or substance use treatment, with key information about common terms and strategies they need in order to be effective in this specialized role. It is also provides a customizable resource of referral information that Peers can share with the people they support.

"People with lived experience of mental illness and recovery are joining leagues of skilled providers who offer services to meet the needs of people with serious psychiatric disorders. The emergence of peer power rides the crest of insights that appeared over the past 50 years related to hope, recovery, and self-determination. Key to these insights is support: coaches, navigators, mentors, and care coordinators who are in the field, addressing the person's goals, and barriers to goals, as they emerge. Peers can clearly learn the interpersonal and instrumental skills of support. In fact, their learned experience may give them special skills and insight into this supportiveness. This book is a deep review into both the conceptual and empirical elements of peer support services"--

There were more visits to peer support/self-help groups last year, than there were visits to the offices of mental health professionals. Peer support groups have exploded in popularity, as the public and the healthcare community recognize that they provide an effective complement to formal care, and improve the chance that many participants will have better healthcare outcomes. Few peer support/self-help group leaders have more than minimal training in how to lead a group successfully. This is unfortunate, as leading a self-help group is often challenging. This pocket resource is designed to provide easy access to key information and strategies to help Peer Specialists and other lay group leaders develop and expand their group facilitation skills so they can lead healthy thriving peer support groups.

We generally assume that people get mental healthcare when they need it. There is clear evidence this is not true. More than half of adults with mental healthcare needs in the United States do not participate in any treatment, and when they do, there is a median delay of 11 years before they enter needed care. Healthcare organizations tend to be passive in the face of this pattern of long delays in treatment entry. Their traditional stance is to wait until patients come to them. The problem with this strategy is that it results in long, unnecessary delays, with more suffering and more cost to those individuals, their families, their employers, the broader community, and ultimately to the healthcare industry. Peer Support Specialists and outreach workers can play a key role in helping people make timely decisions to enter needed mental health treatment and supports like self-help groups. Unfortunately, they rarely receive more than minimal training on how to do this effectively and in a way that respects the autonomy and the needs of their clients. This pocket resource provides the tools and strategies to ensure Peer Support Specialists and outreach workers are well prepared for this critically important work. "I don't know of any other resource like this that addresses how to help people enter treatment when they actually need it, and not years later. It focuses on a gigantic need in the mental health field that is generally being ignored at a high cost to our communities. This book is full of practical information and tools that work with people who are ambivalent about getting help." Charles Drebing, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine, has been a strong advocate for the strategic use of peer support and outreach to better serve adults recovering from mental illness.

In recent years, the concepts of peer support, self-help and self-management have moved from the periphery of mental health care toward the centre, and have fast become mainstream approaches to supporting well-being. Peer Support in Mental Health provides an overview of the core concepts and an appreciation of the complexities, controversies and applications of each concept. This innovative textbook will support not only mental health professionals and trainees, but also peers, people who use services and their carers. The authors... - Track the development of peer support approaches and provide an overview of their current uses and applications. - Use case examples to support the application of theory to practice. - Draw on lived experience to demonstrate the diff erent approaches to peer support.

This book reflects on what it is like being a peer support specialist. To qualify to be a peer support specialist, one must have a lived experience of mental illness, trauma, and/or substance abuse. As a former mental health provider, I worked with people who struggled daily with mental health challenges. Peer support gives them the opportunity to talk with someone who understands, empathizes with and validates their struggles. Together we nurtured a relationship of mutual support that worked toward personal goals unique to each of our recovery journeys. Through this relationship, we regained hope in a life that thrived. This book chronicles my growth as a peer support specialist and a deepening of my understanding of the peer-to-peer relationship and our shared recovery journeys. The book also reflects on my own struggles with mental illness.