Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Mental Health
Date Submitted: Jul 21, 2019
Date Accepted: Feb 15, 2020
Date Submitted to PubMed: May 1, 2020
Peer Support in Mental Health- A General Review of the Literature
ABSTRACT
A growing gap has emerged between people with mental illness and the healthcare professionals, which in recent years have been successfully closed through the adoption of the peer support service (PSS). Peer support (PS) in mental health has been variously defined in the literature, and simply known as the help and support that people with lived experience of mental illness, or a learning disability can give to one another. While PSS dates back to several centuries, it is only the last few decades when it has formally evolved, grown, and become an integral part of the healthcare system. The debate around PS in mental health has been raised frequently in the literature; some authors have emphasized the utmost importance to include the PS into the healthcare system to instill hope, improve engagement, quality of life, self-confidence & integrity and reduce the burden on the healthcare system. Conversely, other rigorous studies suggest there are neutral effects from integrating PSS in healthcare, with a probable waste of resources. In this general review, we will examine the literature, exploring the evolution, growth, types, function, generating tools, evaluation, challenges, and the effect of the PSS in the field of mental health and addiction. Also, we will describe PSSs in different contexts; families, medicolegal system, different age groups, mental illness severity, and the online PSS.
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© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.