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Peer Support Providers’ Role Experiences on Interprofessional Mental Health Care Teams: A Qualitative Study

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Abstract

This study explores how peer support providers’ roles are defined and integrated in inter-professional mental health care teams, and how these providers relate to other practitioners and clients. Interviews were conducted with peer support providers in two different formal models of peer support employment. Qualitative data analysis was undertaken. The findings indicate that: peer support providers experience ambiguity and that some ambiguity may offer benefits; peer support providers enhance team acceptance of their role through several means and strategies; setting boundaries with clients is a delicate issue that requires several considerations that we discuss.

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded by Telfer School of Management Research Funds (SMRF Supervision/Research) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, 55 Laurier Avenue, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Sarah Asad & Samia Chreim

Authors
  1. Sarah Asad
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  2. Samia Chreim
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Correspondence to Sarah Asad.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Asad, S., Chreim, S. Peer Support Providers’ Role Experiences on Interprofessional Mental Health Care Teams: A Qualitative Study. Community Ment Health J 52, 767–774 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10597-015-9970-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10597-015-9970-5

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