Types of membership in peer support groups
When creating a peer support group, you'll need to decide whether your peer support will be open to anyone, or whether you'll restrict membership to particular groups of people. These criteria can specifically refer to mental health, or include peers’ other characteristics like gender, sexuality, ethnicity, migration status, and disability.
This decision is important because it will influence the form of your peer support and might also shape the content of activities. For example, peer support aimed at people with a particular mental health diagnosis might focus on openly discussing peers’ experiences relating to that diagnosis.
A project restricting membership to refugees and migrants might have an emphasis on navigating UK government systems and discussing experiences of discrimination.
Type of mental health issue
You may decide to make your peer support available to anyone experiencing social and emotional distress or you might decide to set up peer support for people experiencing particular types of mental health issues (for example, people with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder).
This decision is about finding your balance between making your peer support open to a wide range of people and creating a space targeted to particular mental health issues.
People with diagnoses that are commonly misunderstood might find it difficult to openly share their experiences in general mental health peer support, where not many others share those experiences.
Including carers
Some peer support projects might decide that they will allow carers (friends and family) to join their peer support. Some peers might find it helpful to be able to bring along their close ones.
On the other hand, peers might feel that including carers who don’t have personal experience of social and emotional distress changes the nature of peer support and might make them feel less safe to share. If there are carers with experience of mental health difficulties, it might be worthwhile considering helping them to set up their own peer support group.
Identities and characteristics
This set of criteria relates to additional layers of common experience shaped by a person’s identity and life circumstances, including gender, sexuality, disability, ethnicity and migration status. You might decide you want to design peer support for people experiencing social and emotional distress who also identify with one or more of those identity aspects.
Sometimes this might be a practical decision, such as running a peer support group in people’s native language if they have limited English language skills. Having clearly defined membership criteria may build trust among peers, making peer support feel more relevant and safe. However, defining your membership criteria based on different aspects of people’s identity cannot guarantee that they will share common experiences.
"The poetry group is a social group as well because it’s open to anybody that wants to come in, [and] maybe dip in and dip out. And that’s really helpful especially if there are some people who are feeling a bit down. They might bring poems that inspire them or help them get through the day."
Stage of recovery
Some peer support projects might decide to only accept members that have reached a certain stage of recovery if they want to ensure that peers are ready to engage productively with peer support. This might be especially important if you decide that your peer support will make use of a flat leadership structure, where all members are equally responsible for running the project.
This decision can also reflect concerns about the kinds of issues the group will realistically be able to deal with. For example, a peer support project may decide not to accept members who are currently in crisis, because it would not be able to support them appropriately.
"…[As] LGBT asylum seekers from repressive, homophobic countries, we are alone… Even our family can’t help. The government is the worst. So, here, knowing that [you are] an LGBT asylum seeker like them can help. [It’s] therapy."
Reflective questions
- Do we want to open up to as many people as possible or limit our peer support to particular people? What benefits and challenges might come with each of these decisions?
- Are we able to support people with any experience, or only experience of specific types of issues?
- How can we support people who do not fit these criteria?
- How can we make new members feel welcome and get to know them better?
- Would people find it helpful to bring carers along? What kind of tensions might this create? How would we manage these?
- Do we want to address issues that are of particular relevance to men or women, LGBTQ+ people, people from minority ethnic communities, refugees and migrants, or people with disabilities? What do we need to do to address this?
- Do we want to make sure that people with limited English language skills are included? What skills and resources do we already have that can help with this?
- Are there ways in which we are unintentionally excluding certain groups or communities? For example, what images are we using to promote our peer support?
- Have we made it clear in our group agreement that we will treat all people with respect, even if we have different lives or backgrounds?
- Does the setup of our peer support need training for peers to engage in it fully?
- Do we need some outside support to help us think about these issues? Who could help us with this?
