New blog: Dispelling myths about peer support
Peer support is widely recognised in Scotland’s mental health landscape yet it is still often misunderstood.
While the language of lived experience and peer roles has become more familiar, assumptions about what peer support is (and isn’t) continue to shape how it is valued, funded and embedded in services. Too often, these assumptions limit the potential of peer support to be part of the change needed across our mental health system.
As we prepare to launch the first in a new series of Insight Reports exploring the current and potential role of peer support in mental health in Scotland, this blog offers a taster by unpacking some of the most common myths about peer support and why they don’t hold up.
Myth: Peer support is risky
Risk is inherent in all mental health treatment and support. There is risk when taking medication, risk in sitting on waiting lists, and risk in misdiagnosis. Yet the risk associated with peer support is often treated as somehow different.
In reality, peer support formalises a peer relationship through clear boundaries, shared values and intentional ways of working that protect everyone involved. Evidence consistently shows that peer support is no more risky than non-peer interventions. Framing peer support as risky can lead to unnecessary barriers and overlooks the safeguards that are built into well designed peer roles. This results in peer support being excluded from services that could benefit from it most.
Evidence consistently shows that peer support is no more risky than non-peer interventions.
Myth: Peer support is just telling your story
Peer workers do not simply “tell their story”.
Through appropriate training and supervision, peer workers learn when, how and whether to draw on their lived experience in ways that maintain mutuality and actively support recovery. Lived experience is used intentionally, not autobiographically, and always in service of the person being supported.
This is a skilled practice, one that requires reflection, boundaries and an understanding of how lived experience can be used safely and effectively. Peer workers do not tell their story but use their lived experience of recovery with the intention of supporting others.
Myth: Peer support is friendship and a chat
Peer support is not informal socialising (which of course has its own benefits). It is a structured, intentional and goal-oriented relationship focused on recovery, with clear boundaries and shared purpose.
What makes peer support distinctive is not simply connection, but shared lived experience and shared power. Peer workers are trained to use their experience to support others in their own recovery journeys. Research consistently distinguishes structured peer support from informal social support, showing that when peer roles are well defined and supported, they can lead to measurable recovery related outcomes.
Myth: Peer support is free
Many people delivering peer support in Scotland do so in unpaid roles but that does not make peer support free.
Peer workers need training, supervision, support and ongoing development, whether their roles are paid or unpaid. There is also a growing evidence base highlighting the importance of peer leadership structures to maintain the integrity, quality and sustainability of peer working. Investment in peer leadership also ensures that lived experience meaningfully informs policy, strategy, service design and delivery not just frontline support.
What the evidence tells us about what works
The most comprehensive reviews of peer support implementation suggest that peer approaches are most likely to succeed when certain conditions are in place. These include access to training, peer supervision, and where peer workers are part of wider teams, supportive, well informed and recovery oriented organisational cultures. Without these conditions, peer roles can become diluted or misunderstood, reinforcing some of the very myths this blog seeks to challenge.
Myth: Peer support is about fixing people
Peer support is about empowerment, not fixing or rescuing.
Rather than providing answers or telling people what to do, peer support creates space for people to explore their own solutions, build confidence and reclaim control over their lives. It supports self-determination and recognises people as experts in their own experiences. Studies focusing on empowerment and self-determination consistently demonstrate the effectiveness of peer support in supporting recovery related outcomes.
Myth: Peer support is inferior to clinical approaches
Peer support does not aim to replace clinical care, it complements it.
By addressing social and emotional needs in ways that clinical models often can’t, peer support can reach people who feel disconnected or misunderstood by formal systems. It also has the flexibility to work across sectors, supporting early intervention, prevention and ongoing support. Research highlights the distinctiveness and complexity of peer support roles, identifying multiple components that underpin effective one-to-one peer work. At its heart is a mutual relationship rooted in shared lived experience, offering emotional, social and practical support that can adapt to people’s cultural values, backgrounds and contexts.
Peer support offers a different kind of support that can complement, rather than compete with traditional care and treatment approaches.
Myth: Peer support needs clinical supervision
Peer support is fundamentally different from clinical care and should be supervised accordingly.
Peer workers benefit most from supervision provided by those with peer expertise, supervisors who understand mutuality, lived experience-led practice and the importance of role fidelity. Consistent, well-informed supervision is repeatedly identified in the research as critical to effective peer working, and peer workers themselves emphasise the value of peer-led supervision.
Why challenging these myths matters
These myths don’t just shape perceptions, they influence decisions about funding, workforce development, service design and leadership. When peer support is misunderstood, it risks being marginalised rather than recognised as a vital part of a whole system response to mental health.
Insight Report 1: Peer Support in Scotland explores these issues in more depth, drawing on research, lived experience and practice evidence to increase understanding of the current and potential role of peer support across Scotland’s mental health system.
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References and further reading The evidence informing this blog is drawn from the literature reviewed in Insight Report 1, including work by Pitt et al. (2013), Mahike et al. (2017), Byrne et al. (2022), Reeves et al. (2023), Kotera et al. (2023), Yim et al. (2023), Cooper et al. (2024) and Puschner (2025).
Originally published at Linkedin
