When someone is in crisis, what they often need most is understanding, not authority. Peer support teams, made up of people with lived experience of mental health challenges, substance use, or system navigation, bring a kind of credibility and empathy that uniforms and titles rarely do.
What Peer Teams Do
De-escalation through trust: Shared experience helps lower fear and defensiveness.
Bridge to services: Peers often know how to navigate systems that professionals can’t explain in plain language.
Reduce stigma: “I’ve been there” cuts through shame and isolation.
Advocate: Peers can push back when medical or police responses overlook dignity and rights.
Canadian Context
CMHA-led programs: Some provinces have piloted peer support as part of crisis teams.
Police alternatives: Cities like Toronto and Winnipeg are testing non-police peer-first crisis units.
Rural and Indigenous contexts: Peer navigators are helping fill gaps where formal services are scarce or distrusted.
988 integration: National crisis lines are exploring stronger links to peer-based services.
The Challenges
Funding and recognition: Peer roles are often underpaid, precarious, or treated as “extras.”
Professional tension: Some clinicians undervalue lived experience compared to formal credentials.
Training and safety: Peer supporters need preparation and backup in volatile situations.
Scaling up: Small pilots struggle to expand into sustainable systems.
The Opportunities
Formalize peer roles: Give peers stable, funded positions in crisis response.
Co-leadership models: Pair clinicians and peers as equals, not hierarchy.
Community trust: Build peer-led hubs where people feel safe seeking help before a crisis peaks.
Shift the culture: Show that healing isn’t only clinical — it’s relational, human, and shared.
The Bigger Picture
Peer support reframes crisis response from control to connection. Systems that center lived experience prove that healing is not just about treatment, but about trust.
The Question
If those who’ve lived through crisis are best positioned to guide others through it, then why are peer teams still treated as side projects? Which leaves us to ask: how can Canada make peer-led crisis response a permanent, core part of community safety?
Peer Support Teams: Healing from Lived Experience
Why Peers Matter
When someone is in crisis, what they often need most is understanding, not authority. Peer support teams, made up of people with lived experience of mental health challenges, substance use, or system navigation, bring a kind of credibility and empathy that uniforms and titles rarely do.
What Peer Teams Do
Canadian Context
The Challenges
The Opportunities
The Bigger Picture
Peer support reframes crisis response from control to connection. Systems that center lived experience prove that healing is not just about treatment, but about trust.
The Question
If those who’ve lived through crisis are best positioned to guide others through it, then why are peer teams still treated as side projects? Which leaves us to ask:
how can Canada make peer-led crisis response a permanent, core part of community safety?