Mental health project creates curriculum for peer support training program
Illustration by Sam Bullis
Only one in six young adults will receive the necessary mental health treatment and support they need. This startling statistic from Stella’s Place, an organization that offers positive clinical mental health services, reveals the grim realities of mental health issues.
Fortunately, Stella’s Place has a multi-pronged solution, one that George Brown College (GBC) is collaborating with. Based around the concept of a peer-support system, the plan is to help fill in specific gaps faced by the current system.
“We need more peer supporters in Toronto and a college-based training program,” states Jenny Carver and Kathy Parsons, the executive director and director of development at Stella’s Place.
“Stella’s Place is working with (GBC) to develop and deliver the first peer support training program aimed at young adults who have lived experiences,” explains Carver and Parsons.
Research by Stella’s Place reveals that people who have had similar lived experiences are able to support each other in ways the traditional medical practice of professional to patient cannot. This was shown at the Let’s Get Mental: Stella’s Place Peer Support Thinkathon held at GBC at the beginning of March.
During this day-long brainstorming session, young adults with lived mental health experiences met and discussed what they believed to be a holistic view of what mental health looks like. Together these young people worked collaboratively to begin creating a curriculum for the peer support training program.
Ideally, the training program would be developed with the college to be a certificate program. It would be designed to meet the specific needs of young adults with mental health issues.
Once implemented and in full operation, the program is intended to provide peer support training to 500 young adults annually.
However, this on the ground training program is only one aspect of the work being done by Stella’s Place.
Another collaborative project in the works for GBC regarding mental health involves the Gerstein Centre and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health helping Stella’s Place develop an online café.
“Even though young adults are highly connected to and reliant on the digital world, there are no online sites for mental health for young adults that are connected to services on the ground in Canada,” explains Carver and Parsons.
Referred to as “a dynamic, interconnected web-based platform and a mobile application,” this online café is intended to provide a place for support in a digital medium currently favoured by young adults in hopes of aiding mental health.
