Experience with introducing peer trainers into mental health education

ABSTRACT

People who have experienced mental health problems often encounter stigmatisation, mainly by professional mental health care providers. Therefore, involvement of experts by experience in courses taught at a higher education institution that provides training for future healthcare professionals aims at destigmatising mental illnesses. Peer trainers have a lived mental health problems experience who take on the role of trainers to present the latest mental health care trends and theories and introduce recovery elements into the educational process.

The data on which the article is based were gathered over a period of three years from focus groups involving 2nd year students of the bachelor’s degree programme of ‘Clinical Social Worker’. The results obtained clearly show the destigmatising effect of this type of teaching: what has proven to be crucial in this regard was, on the one hand, the experience of former patients, and on the other hand, a counterweight to the often-one-sided information prevalent in professional literature on mental health available in the Czech Republic. The teaching reinforced the students’ ability to work in a multidisciplinary team together with a peer support worker and also undermined any prejudice they may have had towards people with mental health problems.

KEYWORDS:

• Expert by experience
• peer trainers
• destigmatisation
• participatory learning
• mental health problems
• focus groups
• recovery

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Internal Grant Competition of the College of Polytechnics Jihlava as project No. 1170/04/1819, “Development of the Healthcare Professional and Social Worker Field of Study at the Department of Social Work of the College of Polytechnics Jihlava“.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Internal Grant Competition of the College of Polytechnics Jihlava as project No. 1170/04/1819, “Development of the Healthcare Professional and Social Worker Field of Study at the Department of Social Work of the College of Polytechnics Jihlava“.

Notes on contributors

Vlasta Řezníková

Dr Vlasta Řezníková, PhD. is a graduate of the Department of Social Policy and Social Work, Faculty of Social Sciences, Masaryk University. She gained experience working with people with a psychiatric diagnosis thanks to her long-term volunteer work, internships and work in centre for psychotherapy of people with mental health issues. She completed self- experienced psychotherapeutic training and supervisory training. She was the leading researcher of the Internal Grant Project, which initially introduced teaching with Experts’ by experience participation.

Martina Černá

Markéta Dubnová, PhD., DiS., has been professionally engaged in social work with people with severe mental health problems for a long time. As pan of her profession, she worked in both types of care - in an inpatient medical facility as a clinical social worker at the mental health hospital and field- based and community services in the mental health care organisation. Since 2013, she has been the head of the Department of Social Work, College of Polytechnics Jihlava. She is a graduate of a doctoral programme at Comenius University in Bratislava, majoring in social work.

Markéta Dubnová

Martina Černá, PhD. is deputy head of the Department of Social Work at College of Polytechnics Jihlava, Czech republic. She teaches social and general psychology. She works as a psychotherapist and deals with the issue of volunteering.