The mental health peer worker as informant: performing authenticity and the paradoxes of passing

Abstract

The inclusion imperative in community care means that disabled people are now increasingly being employed as peer workers in the service systems that manage them. This article offers a timely inquiry into the role of the peer worker in mental health and homeless service sectors. Drawing on a four-year ethnography and in-depth qualitative interviews with fellow peer workers, I explore the paradoxical nature of new expectations for peer ‘authenticity,’ and the ways in which peer workers learn to manage the requirement to perform identity in our work roles. This analysis thus denaturalizes peer identity, and works to develop possibilities for doing disability identity-based work differently.

Keywords:

• Mad Studies
• peer work
• inclusion
• service users
• workplace culture
• identity
• representation

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to all those who have helped throughout this project, especially to those who continue to try to change the system from within. A special thanks to research participants for sharing their time and knowledge.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.