During hard times, people often take comfort in the idea that someone else has also been through what they’re going through and made it to the other side stronger and with a deeper understanding of themselves and their place in the world.
I have spent years watching clients showcase incredible courage as they build resilience, experience growth, and gain insights into our Peer Mentoring program here at Sanctuary Centers. As clients navigate their personal journeys in recovery, they gain strength, competence, and invaluable life skills. Those experiences equip them with the knowledge and resources they need to make a significant difference for another individual on the path to recovery via Peer Mentoring.
Peer Mentoring at Sanctuary Centers
At the core, a Peer Mentor is an individual that has gone through their own recovery process and gained personal experience, perspective, and wisdom that they can utilize to help others through recovery. Peer Mentors dedicate their time to meeting with other individuals – or “Mentees” – who are either just starting their recovery or are at a challenging point in their path. Peer Mentors pull from their personal experiences, offering the invaluable perspective of someone who has walked a mile in the shoes of the Mentee. Their firsthand knowledge of the hardships, pain, and turmoil their Mentees are experiencing gives Mentors unique insights into specifically helpful, healthy coping mechanisms to prevent setbacks such as relapse, for example.
At Sanctuary Centers, Peer Mentors also facilitate groups centered on topics they are knowledgeable about. These groups provide another powerful venue where individuals can connect with one another and gain additional resources of group support to supplement that of the Peer Mentor.
This innate understanding of “You really get me. You have lived through this too,” enables the members to open up quickly as they share deep truths about their struggles, creating even more room for healing and connection.
Benefits of Peer Mentor Programs
Peer Mentoring Improves the Life of the Mentee
Being in the midst of symptoms of mental illness can feel very overwhelming, isolating, and hopeless. Feeling connected to a Peer Mentor who has felt these same feelings creates a sense of comfort, safety, and hope the Mentee often cannot find in other relationships. It is truly touching and inspiring to witness the unique connection between Mentees and Mentors who continue to navigate their own mental health issues.
In addition to these one-on-one benefits, Peer Mentoring can also improve group work as well. Here at Sanctuary Centers, we find our Mentees tend to be more open to feedback from their Mentors. Mentees appear more open to using certain tools and coping mechanisms because they feel that if it worked for the Mentor, it will work for them. In my time observing Peer Facilitated group activities, I have witnessed inspiring levels of safety, connection, and support as they manifest within the group. This innate understanding of “You really get me. You have lived through this too,” enables the members to open up quickly as they share deep truths about their struggles, creating even more room for healing and connection.
Overall, the Peer Mentoring relationship provides the Mentee with hope, reduces feelings of isolation, and provides countless opportunities to learn and practice new coping skills, all of which are key components to recovery.
Peer Mentoring Improves the Life of the Mentor
There is something significant and empowering about moving from the position of the “client” or “patient” to that of the support person and resource for others. Our Mentors have experienced the difficulties of living with and navigating their mental illness, a task often compounded by other life challenges. Giving back to those just starting their journey provides our Mentors with a sense of competence and purpose, not to mention the joy that helping another person can bring. Peer Mentoring also helps clients build connections within social networks of the local community, something we at Sanctuary Centers know to be massively beneficial on the road to recovery. Making connections with the community helps our clients see their improvements in real-world interactions, which helps to reinforce the positive, healthy improvements they are making in their lives.
Peer Mentoring Strengthens the Mental Health Community
Those with mental illness and substance abuse issues too often suffer alone and in silence due to feelings of shame, guilt, and embarrassment about their medical condition. When our Peer Mentors make the decision to serve in the program, they embrace the courage and skills they have acquired in learning to manage their illnesses. No longer alone and in silence about their condition, our Peer Mentors are ready to offer aid to others suffering as they have in the past.
With their intimate knowledge of common experiences and diagnoses shared with their Mentor, a Mentee may also be more likely to open up to a Mentor about their struggles and issues. This open communication between our Mentees and their Mentors often encourages Mentees to be more transparent about their mental health during communication with family, friends, and mental health professionals. The mental health community here at Sanctuary Centers benefits from this deeper understanding of each Mentee as these bonds of trust are built and reinforced over time.
When clients become Mentors, they immediately give a “face” to a real, multifaceted individual dealing with mental illness. Defeating these stigmas and showing the world what mental illness truly looks like is essential if we wish to normalize mental illness in that same way we have normalized so many physical illnesses.
Peer Mentoring Reduces the Stigma and Shame Associated with Mental Illness
The pervasive negative stereotypes presented by the media and the less-informed serve to stigmatize and shame those with mental illness. Some of the representational falsehoods associated with mental illness include a propensity for violence, recklessness, inability to work, and the inability to have healthy relationships. Those falsehoods cannot stand up to a true human representation of what mental illness really looks like. When clients become Mentors, they immediately give a “face” to a real, multifaceted individual dealing with mental illness. Defeating these stigmas and showing the world what mental illness truly looks like is essential if we wish to normalize mental illness in that same way we have normalized so many physical illnesses.
Peer Mentoring Focuses on Strengths, Not Weaknesses
Too often, the focus for individuals with mental illness centers on their symptoms, struggles, and limitations. At Sanctuary Centers, our environment of Mentors and Mentees shifts the focus to strengths, goals, recovery, and an enriching future. In their role as individuals managing their mental illness successfully, each of our Mentors contains a host of untapped resources for potential Mentees.
Mentors in Sanctuary Centers’ Peer Mentor Program don’t only support their Mentees. They also meet once a month as consultants and supports for one another. The focal point of these meetings is not what they are struggling with or where they need to improve. They also focus on the accomplishments of each Mentor, as well as the positive impacts they are having on the Mentees.
Final Thoughts
Peer Mentoring brings a positive new approach to managing mental illness. Our program provides new opportunity and hope to individuals who may not otherwise be open to seeking and accepting assistance. In my work helping our clients navigate their mental illnesses and life challenges, I often find myself returning to one of my favorite quotes:
“When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something’s suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful.” –Barbara Bloom
Our Peer Mentoring program at Sanctuary Centers allows Mentors to see and appreciate the gold that has filled their cracks, and use their history to help themselves and others become more beautiful.
About the Author
Lauren Kopras, MS, CRC
Lauren Kopras, MS, CRC is the Program Director of Mental Health Outpatient Care at Sanctuary Centers of Santa Barbara. Lauren has a Master’s Degree in Vocational Rehabilitation and is a Certified Rehabilitation Counselor. Lauren has been a dedicated member of the Sanctuary Team since 2008, starting first as a Counselor in the Career Development Program. Lauren created and implemented Sanctuary Centers Peer Mentor Program in 2017, and actively works to continue to grow and enhance the program. She is passionate about the essential role community activity and reintegration plays in recovery, and about empowering clients at Sanctuary Centers through the Peer Mentor Program. Lauren believes that we all have a purpose and something to contribute, it just looks different for each of us.
Very good article. It does a good job of talking points from beginning to end. With both of these coping points, and being involved with these.
Excellent writing and great substance.
In today’s world I can’t think of a more important article to read. As a veteran who has lost more friends than I’d like to count, this is a refreshing and hopefully helpful change of pace.