Integrated Care: Wellness-Oriented Peer Approaches: A Key Ingredient for Integrated Care

This month’ issue marks the introduction of a new column dedicated to integrated care. The Integrated Care column will focus on the active ingredients in integrated models, the roles of different provider groups, and the effectiveness of different approaches. In the first installment, a national leader in designing and evaluating consumer-led wellness programs describes how the peer movement has grown to include wellness as a component of recovery and the roles of peer wellness specialists in integrated care teams.

People with lived experience of mental illness have become leaders of an influential movement to help the mental health system embrace the notion of whole health and wellness in the areas of advocacy, policy, and care delivery. Wellness-oriented peer approaches delivered by peer-support whole-health specialists and wellness coaches can play an important role in integrated care models. This column examines the wellness definitions and peer models and some specific benefits and tensions between the peer-oriented wellness approach and the medical model. These models can work in unison to improve health and wellness among people with mental and substance use disorders.