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Mental health peer mentoring – sharing hope

8th February 2018

Mental health peer mentoring

The Advocacy Project is training people and supporting them to be peer mentors…

 

Peer mentoring can often be a very rewarding and satisfying experience. While working with and helping others to develop their skills, you are developing your own talents and abilities at the same time. Mentors often experience increased levels of empowerment, improved self-esteem, an increase in confidence and a renewed ability to cope with their own mental health.

Mentors demonstrate empathy and respect whilst sharing hope and optimism which can have a profound positive effect on mentees. Mentors are living examples of how individuals can recover from mental illness or they can provide strategies for functioning well within society.

The sense of accomplishment is huge when you help someone to achieve their goals, which is enhanced when you know first-hand how difficult their journey can be.

People struggling with mental health issues can often feel isolated and powerless and fear for their future. The peer mentor can help by being a friendly person to go to for advice about dealing with the problems surrounding mental health issues from the perspective of having a similar experience.

“I want the opportunity to give mentees
a voice and draw from my own experiences”
Peer mentor

By focusing on specific goals rather than general open-ended support it helps people to move forward and build on their achievements giving them the confidence to set new goals to work towards.

A peer mentor is someone who can:

  • give support and advice from the perspective of having experienced similar issues
  • tell you about their experience and give ideas about how to deal with specific situations
  • help you identify and contact other organisations that can help you

A peer mentor is not a therapist or a doctor so cannot give you medical advice or tell you what you should do, they will listen to you and help you to engage with the right services.

 

People share their experience

Some of our peer mentors from our Hackney Peer Mentor project described the mentoring process in the following ways:

  • blossoming and revealing inner peace and support
  • a light at the end of the tunnel
  • sharing the same energy
  • a journey moulding and shaping together
  • building trust
  • being accepted and also accept support
  • empowerment and belief in you
  • working shoulder to should

 

Introductory courses

Update June 2020: we don’t currently have any courses planned. If you’d like to hear about other ways to get involved in our work, please email us at document.write("vasb@nqibpnplcebwrpg\056bet\056hx\056".replace(/[a-zA-Z]/g, function(c){return String.fromCharCode((c<="Z"?90:122)>=(c=c.charCodeAt(0)+13)?c:c-26);}));">

 

Here is what some of the people who attended the training said:

    • Definitely delighted to be part of this project, I’m glad to be on board. Very good trainer!
    • It was a very good day. I am excited, happy and grateful. Thank you very much.
    • It was really good training, very informative.
    • I feel motivated and inspired by the tutors.
    • It was an invaluable insight to peer mentoring.

 

More information

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