Lived Experience, Bias, and Stigma (Core Competencies: 1.5; 1.11; 2.2; 2.5; 2.9; 2.10; 3.3; 3.5; 3.7; 4.6; 4.8; 4.18) To provide effective peer support services, it is important to examine personal beliefs about lived experiences. Examining and challenging our implicit and explicit biases about certain people or groups of people will increase our capacity for providing effective peer support to all people. Let’s consider four lived experiences: hearing voices, eating or body image-related challenges, substance use, and psychiatric medication side effects. It’s important to be mindful that people in a certified peer specialist course will be navigating some or all the lived experiences explored here. Hearing voices experiences What unique biases or stigmas may relate to this lived experience? What is the nature of the potential biases or stigmas? • Hearing voices, seeing visions, or having what are commonly seen as unusual beliefs about the world are commonly feared, judged, and misunderstood because these experiences are not readily observable. In fact, an estimated 1 in 10 people worldwide have such experiences. • In the mental health and substance use service systems, such experiences are often given the diagnostic label of schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders. What can go wrong through not challenging or addressing our potential biases? What are the negative impacts on people? • Many hold biases toward voice hearers through negative portrayals in media, news, and popular culture. People often link people who hear voices or who have a diagnosis of schizophrenia with violence. In reality, voice hearers and people with schizophrenia are more likely to be the victims—not the perpetrators—of violence. • Within the substance use and mental health service system, there is an assumption that certified peer specialists can only offer peer support to people with relatively mild or moderate challenge. This is a myth that withholds potentially valuable peer support opportunities from many people. • When viewing voice hearing as a pathological experience, certified peer specialists also miss an opportunity to better understand peers who may come from a culture or spiritual tradition where these experiences have a spiritual meaning or cultural significance.
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