Peer support and global mental health

Abstract

Peer support, i.e. persons with a lived experience of mental illness and recovery supporting others living with mental health problems, is an empirically validated resource-oriented therapeutic promoting recovery (Priebe et al. 2014; Slade et al. 2014). During the last decades, peer support has been implemented to varying degrees in mental health services of many high income countries (Mahlke et al. 2014). At the same time, the burden of mental disorders and the treatment gap between those in need and those actually receiving formal mental health care is especially prominent in low and middle income countries (Kohn et al. 2004; Patel et al. 2007). The knowledge of people with a lived experience of mental illness who de-stigmatise mental illness, offer alternative viewpoints in understanding clients and strengthen a person-focused (rather than a pathological-focused) discourse is an untapped resource in global mental health.