Perhaps the best definition of Peer support comes from Shery Mead. Peer support is a system of giving and receiving help founded on the key principles of authentic respect, shared responsibility, and mutual agreement of what is helpful. Peer support is not based on psychiatric models and diagnostic criteria. It is about understanding another’s situation empathically through the shared experience of emotional and psychological pain. When people find affiliation with others they feel are “like” them, they feel a connection.
This connection, or affiliation, is a deep, holistic understanding based on mutual experience where people are able to “be” with each other without the constraints of traditional (expert/patient) relationships. Further, as trust in the relationship builds, both people are able to respectfully challenge each other when they find themselves in conflict. This allows members of the peer community to try out new behaviours with one another and move beyond previously held self-concepts built on disability and diagnosis.
Peer support can offer a culture of health and ability as opposed to a culture of “illness” and disability. The primary goal is to responsibly challenge assumptions about mental illnesses and at the same time to validate the individual for who they really are and where the have come from. Peer support attempts to think creatively and non-judgmentally about the way individuals experience and make meaning of their lives in contrast to having all behaviours and feelings diagnosed and labelled.
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