In the last two years I’ve been involved in two reviews of peer support and peer led responses in Canada – one for Ontario (click to download) and the other for the whole of Canada (which has yet to be released by the Mental Health Commission of Canada).

Services run by and for ‘mad’ people have been a small but growing part of the landscape since the 1970s. Peers have supported each other informally since they were first thrown together into the lunatic asylums, and probably even be...