Peer Support - Valuable, Essential, Evidenced and never more Powerful than during COVID-19

For the vulnerable, there has never been a greater need for Peer Support in Canada. Yet our numbers are few as employed in the social services, clinical and corporate positions in society, even as there is urgent need. The essential role of the Peer Supporter is not being recognized despite the government’s funding to front line staff positions and to mental health supports as the role effectively provides strong evidence of positive mental health and physical well being outcomes for the vulnerable. News this week speaks to the need of the vulnerable. Employing Peer Supporters as the solution to level the curve of mental health fallout within the pandemic is the solution governments, institutions and organizations are not identifying despite the researched evidence of outcome to mental health and physical health wellness.

News reports this week state that youth and children have increased their calls to Help lines for safety by 112 percent at this time; front line workers express they are at high capacity challenge for their own mental health wellness - and partners of front line workers live with daily threat of positive COVID-19 testing of their loved ones and family; many vulnerable with mental health illness cope with harmful substances, and numbers of overdose deaths have spiked with 345 suspected opioid overdose calls to paramedics and 19 fatalities - within this past month of alone; senior homes fatalities, families of seniors and their front line workers are hardest hit with COVID-19 deaths. Personal Support Workers must often provide Peer Support services dual to their own role requirements due to lack of Peer Support staff - or the role of Peer Supports understanding as an additional essential role; and when we have been asked to "stay home and stay safe" during COVID-19, home isn’t a safe place for women in abusive and violent relationships; and finally for those who have no home and were already unwell living in shelters with pre-existing mental health illness and physical health issues are still mostly waiting, living 1 metre apart in large numbers, to be moved to safety from COVID-19 outbreak; this, a wait time that is not available to the innocent waiting trial in prisons where there is no safety from COVID-19 among guards and inmates with 100 new cases of positive corona virus reported this past week.

Research on Peer Support is strong in its’ effectiveness in reducing negative symptoms of isolation, stress and fear, while increasing the ability to cope with stress, increasing self-efficacy, increasing social support outreach and increasing quality of life (1). Peer run organizations show significantly high improvements in empowerment, hope, and recovery among those vulnerable receiving Peer Support service. Peer Support has shown to be successful with recovery from mental health struggles; recovery from addictions and social isolation; and it has become a powerful tool to fight homelessness and stay housed over the long run. (4)

Recent research from The Mental Health Commission of Canada research evidence states Peer Support is beneficial to people. It saves lives. It helps people get back the lives they have lost. Peer support has shown the ability to have significant impacts on reduction of drug and alcohol use. (3)

People and families living with mental illness turn to Peer Support as a substitute or adjunct to hospital, community and professional services. The Canadian Mental Health Association evidences Peer Support organizations’ work shows reduction in mental health symptom distress, reduction in hospitalization need and improvements in quality of life.

In Europe, where research and evidence are slightly more advanced, outcomes show that, with Peer Support, isolation effects are reduced, hospitalization rates are reduced, especially with the more consistent visitors to hospitals and emergency rooms, substance use and dependence is reduced; and the Peer Support Model helps with substantial main stream system cost-savings. (5)

It is the hardest time for mental health in isolation - especially so with the vulnerable who were already affected by trauma and now with growing anxiety and depression as they remain unsupported. Ontario has responded with funding for mental health, understanding the extreme need for supports. What has not been funded and needs direct funding are Peer Support employment positions within all organizations.

(1). Campbell & Leaver, 2003; Humphreys et al., 2004; Solomon, 2004 – Research showed that peer support as a strategy to help people cope with a variety of health and social conditions. (2) Clay, 2005; Rogers et al., 2007, Campbell, 2005a - Large study on peer support services run by eight Consumer Survivors (People with Lived Experience of Mental Health Illness) organizations.(3) Baker & Maguire, 2017; Tsemberis & Zenner, 2018 (4) Bean, Shafer & Glennon, 2013 (5) European Federation of National Organizations Working with the Homeless, FEANTSA, Public Policy Paper, Peer Support: A tool for Recovery in Homeless Service, 2018