What is NAMI’s Peer-to-Peer Program?

• The course was written by Kathryn Cohan McNulty, a person with a psychiatric disability who is also a former provider and manager in the mental health field and a longtime mutual support group member and facilitator.
  
• An advisory board comprised of NAMI consumer members, in consultation with Joyce Burland, Ph.D., author of the successful NAMI Family-to-Family Education program, helped guide the curriculum’s development.
  
• Since 2005, NAMI’s Peer-to-Peer Recovery Program has been supported by AstraZeneca.

What does the course include?

• Peer-to-Peer consists of nine two-hour units and is taught by a team of three trained “Mentors” who are personally experienced at living well with mental illness.
  
• Mentors are trained in weekend-long training sessions, supplied with teaching manuals, and are paid a stipend for each course they teach.
  
• Participants come away from the course with a binder of hand-out materials, as well as many other tangible resources: an advance directive; a “relapse prevention plan” to help identify tell-tale feelings, thoughts, behavior, or events that may warn of impending relapse and to organize for intervention; mindfulness exercises to help focus and calm thinking; and survival skills for working with providers and the general public.