Purpose and Path
The purpose of Peer Positive is to offer community to diverse kinds of people who experience mental suffering, including those who have been inside or continue dealing with the mental health system, as recipients of services and other forms of interventions.
Experience teaches us that entering the mental health system can be isolating, stigmatizing, uncertainty or anxiety producing; in general a debilitating exercise. This is true both for individuals and families. Often a lack of community and the shame of a diagnosis make people close themselves up or build support groups that reinforce treatment options. At times membership of such groups brings no tangible outcomes that assist exiting treatment regimens, and over a span of time create a path for a descent into debility.
In a long span of understanding the above scenario, Peer Positive has emerged as a community space bringing lesser known ideas about recovery, stories, narratives, art and other forms of communication about mental health. We encourage looking beyond psychiatric frameworks in comprehending the mental suffering of people. The primary goal of this space is to share knowledge and ideas — but that is not all. We also hope people who are confined, confused, lost within their mental suffering, or who do not know what to do after a diagnosis impairs their life, will also see others who have been in similar situations, yet carving lives in empowered ways.
Peer Positive is a peer-led effort, whose goal is to
- 1
Create space for people with mental suffering, with or without a diagnosis, to build community, share stories, narratives and other opportunities for recovery that offer support.
- 2
Document narratives, life trajectories and outcomes for people who have been harmed by medical interventions, or those who have exited psychiatric treatments.
- 3
Bring to the fore the knowledge of people with lived experience of mental health issues, in particular those studying and researching in the new fields of Mad Studies and Survivor Research.
- 4
Organize online and in-person talks, lectures, interviews and symposia by researchers, academics, journalists, artists, educators, and others who visualize mental health in its socio-cultural context, beyond individual biology — or who bring unique insights and knowledge to the field.
- 5
Identify and verify individuals and organizations offering non-medical services in mental health, and share about them to enable plurality of options for people seeking alternatives.
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