Their personal experience of these challenges provide peer support specialists with expertise that professional training cannot replicate.
[1] Some roles filled by peer support specialists include assisting their peers in articulating their goals for recovery, learning and practicing new skills, helping them monitor their progress, supporting them in their treatment, modeling effective coping techniques and self-help strategies based on the specialist's own recovery experience, supporting them in advocating for themselves to obtain effective services, and developing and implementing recovery plans.
[3] As of 2016,[update] 42 US states, the District of Columbia, and the Veterans' Administration have adopted such programs to train and certify individuals to work as peer support specialists.
Components often include support groups and individual therapy, basic health care maintenance, stable housing, improvements in family life and personal relationships, and community connections.
[11] PARfessionals has developed the first internationally approved online training program for peer support specialists in the fields of mental health and addiction recovery.