The Power of Peers: BHSN’s Shift to Team-Based Care and Lived Experience

Following the completion of a comprehensive, two-day peer services training for all staff, conducted by The Alliance for Rights and Recovery, Behavioral Health Services North (BHSN) has officially expanded its services to include a more robust peer program of Certified Recovery Peer Advocates. The Alliance’s Peer Services Training program strengthens BHSN’s efforts to improve behavioral health care and provide peer support services.

BHSN's participation in this training is a commitment to data-driven, evidence-based professional development and continuous improvement of the support services provided to communities served. The two-day training aligned with statewide efforts to expand and professionalize the peer workforce.

Peer advocates are individuals with lived experience of mental illness or substance use recovery, and are increasingly recognized and utilized by the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) as a critical component of effective, person-centered behavioral health care. Peer advocates are essential to mental wellness and recovery as they offer a uniquely relatable perspective of life while navigating mental health and/or substance use challenges. Their role is not clinical – it’s interpersonal. Peers support understanding and foster engagement with individuals who are seeking help. They help BHSN deliver services with meaningful inclusion, integrity, and connection to back it.

Because peer advocates draw on personal experience with recovery, they are uniquely positioned to build trust, model hope, and help individuals reconnect with their communities. Peers know a thing or two because they have seen a thing or two.

When an individual served sees that the person they are talking to really “gets it” on a fundamentally deeper, personal level, it leads to transcendent care and breakthroughs in recovery.

According to Mental Health America's 2019 Evidence for Peer Support report, individuals paired with a peer mentor after psychiatric hospitalization had significantly fewer hospital days and rehospitalizations, and in one recent study, doubled their average time to rehospitalization compared to those receiving standard post-discharge care.

Data from the Alliance for Rights and Recovery’s (formerly the New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services) Peer Bridger model also demonstrates the measurable impact of this work. Compared to individuals who did not receive peer support, participation in New York's Peer Bridger program resulted in: 

• 47.9% decrease in the number of people using inpatient psychiatric services; 

• 62.5% decrease in the number of inpatient days; 

• 28.0% increase in outpatient visits; and 

• 47.1% decrease in total behavioral health costs. 

Peers are joining a recovery-oriented, trauma-informed, interdisciplinary team to contribute their perspective through a different lens of care. Peers make sure individuals served have a voice at the table when it comes to their care. The peer brings up their individual’s wants and needs during staff supervision to ensure a person-centered approach is upheld. Advocacy is at the heart of this initiative.

“By expanding our peer infrastructure, we hope to build upon the strong peer network already present in our community. In collaboration with the Alliance for Rights and Recovery, we are providing the education, support, and training needed to strengthen and sustain this workforce,” said BHSN President & CEO Katherine Cook.

“At the heart of the peer model are authentic, equitable relationships and an understanding that many people seeking help have experienced challenges within the behavioral health system. Centering the wisdom and voice of lived experience will help all of us better meet the needs of the individuals and communities we serve.” 

Peers are guided and trained on how to strategically share and disclose their lived experience with purpose and appropriate boundaries to help facilitate healing. This disclosure can be as simple as “I experienced [X] as a result of my mental health and substance use challenges. In that moment, that made me feel [x,y,z], so I know how you feel. But I overcame it, and if recovery is possible for me, it’s possible for you too!”

Peers are beacons of hope. They are active members of our communities. They are real and they are here for one another.

“Peer support works because it offers something fundamentally different: relationships grounded in shared experience, hope, choice and the belief that people can and do recover. But simply hiring peers isn’t enough,” said Shannon Higbee, Chief Strategy Officer, The Alliance for Rights and Recovery.

“Organizations need to understand and protect what makes the role unique. BHSN has really leaned into that work, not just with peer staff, but across the organization, building the understanding, support and culture that allow peers to do what they do best, which is connect with people in ways that open up new possibilities for recovery and a meaningful life in the community.”

While peers are not clinical, that does not mean they are without structure and support themselves. Peers are supervised by BHSN staff in a professional and collaborative manner to deliver services ethically and competently; supervisors are there every step of the way to offer guidance to and collaborate with peers in continually improving each other’s skills.

Peer supervisors give peers the tools to be collaborative, accountable, supportive, flexible, consistent, culturally-responsive and equity-centered.

Supervisors help catch burnout and drift quickly by working to meet the peer where they are at in order for them to then meet their individual(s) where they are at.

“Equipping our team with this advanced training allows us to meet individuals right where they are in their recovery,” said Meghan Mitchell, Coordinator of Peer Services, BHSN Queensbury Center for Wellbeing.

“Peer support is rooted in empathy, shared experience, and trust, and expanding these skills ensures our local communities receive the most compassionate, effective care possible.”

This experience is strength-based and growth-focused. What experiences and skills do these peers have that help them breakthrough to their individuals? What tools are we giving peers to grow and actualize, themselves? Those questions drive the integrity of BHSN’s Peer Program.

“[Peers] are resilient! No other role asks you to bring yourself to work the way that peer support ask you to,” said Higbee.

This helpful reminder is important for maintaining mutual respect and trust between staff, peers, and individuals served – which is at the heart of everything we do at BHSN. 

By completing this training, BHSN staff are better equipped to deliver peer-driven services rooted in hope, choice, self-determination, and mutuality, which are core recovery principles that have consistently been linked to improved outcomes for individuals across New York State.