Peer Support Services
Peer Support Specialists encourage your personal development, foster your independence, and help you develop the skills you need to promote and guide your own recovery. Like case management and Case Managers, each state defines and regulates the scope and details of the services Peer Support Specialists provide to people in recovery.
While the specifics vary from state to state, Peer Support Specialists prioritize and support your:
- Personal relationship to recovery from alcohol or drug addiction.
- Ability to advocate for yourself during recovery.
- Ability to create and sustain relationships that support recovery.
- Ability to identify and live according to a personal set of values.
- Ability to direct your care according to your needs and goals.
A Peer Support Specialist helps you understand that recovery is not one-size-fits-all. During your recovery process, you determine your own path. Here’s how a Peer Support Specialist defines recovery:
Recovery means the personal process of change in which individuals strive to improve their health and wellness, resiliency, and reach their full potential through self-directed actions.
In most states, Peer Support Services include, but are not limited to
Peer Support Specialists also act as role models for recovery. Most, if not all, Peer Support Specialists are in recovery themselves and therefore have lived experience and direct, experiential knowledge of the recovery process, including all its ups and downs. They can empathize with you, share their experiences, advocate for you, and help you connect and communicate with family, peers, and your treatment team.
- An ongoing assessment of your recovery needs.
- Helping you achieve personal independence in whatever way you define it.
- Encouraging hope, optimism, and a positive attitude toward your treatment and recovery program and process.
- Helping you meet and exceed your recovery goals.
- Coordinating crisis interventions if needed.
How Important Are Actions When Suffering From a Mental Health Disorder?
It is also important to understand the meaning of our actions whenever we are suffering from any type of mental health disorder. Overall, mental health disorders determine how we deal with stress, anxieties, behaviors, and how we make healthy choices.
Oftentimes when someone is depressed, or suffering from any other type of mental illness, it can cause people to act out or even do things that they wouldn’t normally do. From drinking alcohol or using drugs, showing changes in their weight, changes in sleeping habits, forcing happiness, and more, actions can prove that someone is not mentally stable.
Identifying these actions in someone you love, or even yourself is essential in order to get the help that you or a loved one needs. Whether that’s talk therapy, or even medication management, there is plenty of help out there to get you back on your feet.