Lynne Smith was 7 years old when she first tried to kill herself. She turned to alcohol at age 12, hard drugs at 16.
For decades, Smith, who suffers from bipolar, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorders, lived on the street, passed in and out of abusive personal care homes and turned to drugs to cope.
Then, nearly two years ago now, she discovered the Bartow County Peer Support, Wellness and Respite Center in Cartersville.
“It turned my whole life around,” Smith said. “When I got here, I was totally broken.”
Georgia has struggled for years to improve care for individuals suffering from mental illness. Public resources remain scarce. Psychiatrists and other mental health professionals are in desperately short supply. But there is one area of mental health care in which the Peach State is a national leader: peer support.
Fifteen years ago, Georgia pioneered an innovative program that trains people in recovery from mental illness how to help thousands of individuals just like them get back on their feet. These peers don’t replace psychiatrists or other medical professionals, experts say. But they can offer something many professionals can’t: support from someone who has had similar experiences living with a mental illness.
They help people learn how to cultivate friendships, find stable places to live, help overcome job-related anxiety and encourage them to take more control over their health and well-being. There are now roughly 1,200 peer support specialists statewide
“What it saves first and foremost is people’s lives — in and out of crisis, in and out of homelessness, in and out of jail,” said Sherry Jenkins Tucker, executive director of the nonprofit Georgia Mental Health Consumer Network. “(Peer support) has really changed the face of what we can do here in Georgia.”
The nonprofit group runs five peer respite centers across the state, including the modest home in Cartersville where Smith spends much of her time. The centers offer people in crisis a safe place to stay for a few days, which can help avoid costly hospitalizations.
“If they really want the support, they don’t have to struggle,” said Jennifer Barnett, who runs the center. “They don’t have to be out there wandering the streets anymore.”
At the centers, people can share their experiences without fear of being judged, said Barnett, who has bipolar disorder and depression.
The centers are a safe place to socialize and find acceptance, said mental health advocate Cynthia Wainscott. People can come and cook, take a class about finance and do art projects, among other activities, Wainscott said.
“Everything is to affirm the person,” she said.
A team of behavioral health experts from Arkansas visited Georgia earlier this year to learn about the peer respite center model.
There has increasingly been a push to include respite in the services the state provides to mentally ill Arkansans, said said Julie Meyer, director of policy and research at the Arkansas Division of Behavioral Health Services. The Georgia centers’ focus on recovery for people really left an impression on the team, Meyer said.
“People recover. They get better,” she said. “We have to allow them to get better.”
The role of peer support specialists has increasingly been promoted by mental health professionals as critical to improving the well-being and lives of individuals who deal with mental illness.
One in five Americans deals with a mental illness in any given year, yet there is a dearth of mental health professionals to care for them, experts say.
Peer support specialists, though they can’t replace clinicians, are one cost-effective way to get people help, especially those living in rural areas with even greater shortages of psychiatrists and other professionals, said Sita Diehl with the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
Peer support specialists don’t just work at respite centers. They also work in behavioral health centers and are part of crisis teams that visit individuals with severe mental illness in their homes.
The peer support movement is a key component of mental health treatment, Diehl said. “It’s about people taking ownership of their lives.”
Today, Lynne Smith says she still struggles with her mental illness but draws hope from those around her at the peer support center in Cartersville. She lives on her own in an apartment nearby. She hopes to become a certified peer specialist herself.
“This is my family; this is my home,” she said. “They loved me until I could love myself.”
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