Reclaiming Peer Support: Make Your Credential Work For You
Over the past three decades, and around the country, peer support specialists (sometimes called peer supporters, certified peer specialists, or simply “peers”) have entered mental health service agencies’ workforce. While each state has its own training and credentialing process, all peer support specialists have personal experience of mental health or substance use challenges – including depression, thoughts of suicide, drinking or drug use, hearing voices, autism, and in some cases may be family members.
State of the Science: Supporting Individuals to Live as Vibrant Elders in Recovery (S.I.L.V.E.R.)
Steve Bartels MD, MS It is my distinct privilege to provide this inaugural commentary as the Senior Scientist for the recently funded Rehabilitation Research and Training Center “Supporting Individuals to Live as Vibrant Elders in Recovery” (S.I.L.V.E.R. RTCC) at the Boston University Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation. The 5-year S.I.L.V.E.R. RRTC is funded by the National […]
Cognitive Self-Management Strategies for Work and School
by Dr. Susan McGurk and Dr. Kim Mueser We are constantly barraged in our daily lives with new information competing for our limited attention. And there is even more information available than ever before, at the tip of our fingers, on our cell phones and computers. We need to manage the beckoning alerts of tweets, […]
Coaching for Peer Specialists
The role of peer specialists in behavioral health settings has grown dramatically in the last couple of decades. But, as a relatively new addition to the workforce, it is experiencing “growing pains”. Common experiences relayed by peer support workers include a lack of clarity about how their role fits into the mental health workplace and confusion about what their work tasks should and should not be. For some behavioral healthcare workers, research suggests that this results in stress, distress and burnout, all of which have worsened because of the pandemic
Online Technical Assistance Model: Action as a Precursor to Knowledge
The Online Technical Assistance (OTAR) model was developed as a pilot program, with the goal of assisting organizations (e.g. state agencies, providers, for- and non-profit entities) that want to improve their employment outcomes for people with psychiatric disabilities by improving their policies, funding, and system design.
The Peer Support Specialist Workforce: Where have we been and where are we going?
The Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation (CPR) at Boston University has partnered with the voices of those with lived experience from its earliest days – that is, the voices of those who would eventually populate the peer support specialist workforce. Luminaries in the field such as Pat Deegan, Judi Chamberlin and Dan Fisher, were among the many people with lived experience who collaborated with Bill Anthony and colleagues in the formative days of the CPR.
What is Psychiatric Rehabilitation?
For our inaugural article, we thought we would tackle a basic question that the Center has contributed to answering over the years, i.e. What exactly is “psychiatric rehabilitation”?