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...

The mental health sector, like any other, is crowded with bureaucracy, politics, standards, indicators, jargon, gossip and other day-to-day diversions. In this atmosphere it’s difficult to disentangle oneself enough to burrow down and explore the bedrock of beliefs the mental health system is based upon. These beliefs drive our thoughts and feelings, our behaviour and our systems, but we are often barely aware of them.

Occasionally I get the time to dig down into these bedrock beliefs. I d...