Mental health workers' perspectives on a peer support intervention in five countries

Silvia KRUMM1, Maria HAUN1, Selina GIRIT1, Jasmine KALHA1, Yael GOLDFARB1, Galia MORAN1

1Ulm University Department for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy II , Ulm, Germany

Objective: Around the globe, the introduction of peer support in mental health teams creates opportunities and challenges for both peer and non-peer staff. However, the majority of research on mental health workers experiences with peer support comes from high-income countries, with questionable transferability to diverse mental health services and cultural backgrounds. Thus, this study investigates mental health worker experiences across a range of high-, middle-, and low-income countries.

Methods: Six focus groups with  25 mental health workers (19 female, 6 male) were conducted about 18 months after the implementation of the UPSIDES peer support intervention. Qualitative data was collected in the UPSIDES study sites in Ulm and Hamburg (Germany), Butabika (Uganda), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Be’er Sheva (Israel), and Pune (India). Transcripts were analyzed using thematic content analysis.

Results: Mental health workers gained trust in peer support over time and valued peer support workers for sharing their lived experiences with service users. Participants in lower-resource study sites (Uganda, Tanzania) reported additional benefits, including provision of mental health services in the community and reduced workload for mental health workers. Perceptions about peer support workers varied based on previous peer support experience, ranging from considering peer support workers as equal team members to viewing them as service users.

Conclusions: Taking local context into account is essential in order to understand mental health workers’ views on the cooperation with peer support workers. Especially in settings with less prior experience of peer support, implementers should make extra effort to promote interaction between mental health workers and peer support workers. In order to better understand the determinants of successful implementation of peer support in diverse settings, further research should investigate the impact of contextual factors (e.g., resource availability, cultural values).