Peer support among persons with severe mental illnesses: a review of evidence and experience

“As much as possible, all servants are chosen from the category of mental patients. They are at any rate better suited to this demanding work because they are usually more gentle, honest, and humane” — Jean Baptiste Pussin, in a 1793 letter to Philippe Pinel 1. Peer support among persons with severe mental illnesses has been largely considered a recent phenomenon, with the first published account of this presumably “new” form of service delivery dating to 1991 2 and attributed to the mental health service user movement that began in the 1970s 3. As the passage quoted above suggests, however, the idea that persons in recovery may be especially well-suited to helping others suffering from a severe mental illness…