If you’ve been around peer support for a while, you might be feeling a bit conflicted.
On one hand, the work has come a long way.
On the other, it can still feel like peer support is stuck having the same conversations it was having ten years ago — explaining itself, defending itself, trying to fit into systems that don’t quite know what to do with lived experience.
That tension is exhausting. Especially if you’ve ever been the one in the room translating human moments into “acceptable” language so the work doesn’t get dismissed.
I felt that a lot when I was working in peer support. Caring deeply, doing meaningful work, and still wondering why it felt like we were always justifying our existence instead of building something better.
This blog is about why that’s starting to change.
I’m going to walk through what I’m seeing shift right now, why the next ten years of peer support feel different, and what that could mean for the people doing the work and the people receiving it.
And if I’m right, the outcome is pretty hopeful.
For a long time, peer support had one main job: justify itself.
Is it legitimate? Is it safe? Is it professional enough? Does it “count” beside clinical models?
And to be fair… those weren’t totally unfair questions.
Peer support was moving from “something that happens naturally between humans” into “something systems try to fund, structure, and scale.”
A big reason the last decade felt so policy-heavy is because the evidence was still being gathered and organized in a way decision-makers could actually use.
For example, SAMHSA has been publishing evidence-focused briefs for years on what peer support is and what it tends to improve – things like hope, engagement, connection, recovery outcomes.
And large evidence reviews have been assessing effectiveness and “what the research says” about peer support for serious mental illness for a long time too, including where results are strong and where they’re mixed.
There are even studies done by The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse highlighting the cost-effectiveness of long-term post-treatment peer recovery support services in the United States.
So yeah, definitions, guardrails, policies, pilot projects. Important work. Necessary work. Often exhausting work.
The trade-off was that peer support sometimes had to shrink itself to fit systems that weren’t built for lived experience. Messy humanity got translated into neat frameworks. Stories became “interventions.” Connection got timed, measured, and boxed.
That era built the foundation… but it also revealed the limits.
Here’s the truth… people aren’t JUST looking for services anymore.
They’re looking for relationship,
Yes, things like burnout, mental illness and loneliness are growing positively in the way we treat and manage people, but so is mistrust of the system.
If you want numbers that match what a lot of us are feeling:
So lived experience (real, imperfect, still-in-process lived experience) starts to feel less like a “nice touch” and more like one of the few things that still reads as credible.
For years, lived experience was invited in politely, as long as it stayed on script.
Now? It’s being recognized as a form of expertise.
The research world has been catching up to what peer supporters have known in their bones for a long time: peer support can improve recovery-related outcomes (including things like hope and personal recovery), even when effect sizes are modest.
There’s also randomized controlled trial evidence across multiple countries showing peer support can improve things like social inclusion, empowerment, and hope for people with severe mental health conditions.
The next decade of peer support won’t ask people to leave their humanity at the door. It will train people to use it responsibly, reflectively, and skillfully.
When most people access or think of accessing mental health support their mind often jumps to “in a crisis”. While this is important, and a cornerstone of dealing with mental health and wellness, focusing on ONLY Crisis is an outdated way of thinking.
The next chapter leans earlier and peer support is moving into:
Part of why this matters is simple: social connection is protective, not just "extra".
The Surgeon General’s advisory lays out how social connection is linked to better health outcomes and how isolation/loneliness are associated with risk across multiple conditions.
When you zoom in on younger folks, there’s growing attention to peer support as a way to increase access, reduce barriers, and support navigation through care, especially when traditional services aren’t landing.
This is the difference between only knowing how to hold a fire extinguisher
and learning how to build fire-resistant homes.
Early peer support sometimes swung between two extremes:
The next decade understands something crucial: boundaries reduce care and make care sustainable.
There’s actual research pointing straight at this: role confusion and inter-role conflict (friend vs. professional vs. staff member vs. expert-by-experience) creates tension for peer workers.
Literature reviews on peer employment highlight how unclear scope can make boundary-setting harder, and how newer peer workers may be more vulnerable to those challenges.
Even recent workforce research keeps naming role clarity and boundary management as a core issue to get right if we want peer support to last. Peer support is maturing into a practice where saying “no” is part of saying “yes” for the long haul.
One size never fit-all, and it never will.
There are real disparities in who accesses care and who feels safe inside it.
For example, research looking at transition-age youth in public mental health programs examined whether the availability of peer support relates to disparities in outpatient service use among racially/ethnically minoritized youth.
And emerging work on Indigenous youth-led peer support highlights how centering culture and community needs to be well thought out and executed to ensure safe environments
This means that peer support is learning how to adapt without losing its core: mutuality, dignity, and shared humanity
For years, peer supporters were doing incredible work while struggling to explain it.
That’s changing.
You can see it in how much more developed the evidence summaries, implementation guidance, and workforce conversations have become—both in government-adjacent resources (like SAMHSA) and in large-scale reviews that don’t just ask “does it work?” but also “how do we implement it without wrecking the people doing it?”
In Canada, the Mental Health Commission has also been making the case for peer support for years, naming benefits and system impacts in plain language that leaders can actually use.
The language is getting sharper, the frameworks are getting clearer and the confidence is getting steadier
Steady things not only tend to last, they create a space to continually build in a positive direction.
If you’re involved in peer support (formally or informally) you’re standing inside something that’s growing up.
The next decade won’t erase the last one. It will build on it.
With better tools, clearer roles and deeper trust, there’s a stronger understanding that healing doesn’t happen to people, it happens between them.
To get more reflections, tools, and lived-experience experiments, you can subscribe to the email list at thejeffturner.ca.
If you’re looking to build a gentle reflection habit, you might also like The FREE Front-Line Worker’s Guide to Managing Overthinking.
Until next time,
I’m Jeff, and remember to take care of yourself, however that looks to you.