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In the face of  socio-political marginalization, frontline communities 
reclaim power by harnessing peer wisdom and resilience. The year 2020 
marked the confluence of  a global pandemic and widespread resistance 
against anti-Black racism and police violence, highlighting the value of  
peer voices and community perspectives. To dismantle and transcend 
carceral approaches to community care, the field of  social work is invited 
to join a larger anti-carceral mental health movement that honors 
lived experience and works alongside peers to build identity-affirming 
structures of  mental health care. This article examines the ways in which 
frontline communities benefit from expanded access to anti-carceral 
formal and informal peer support as a mental health safety net that 
interrupts harm and prioritizes agency, consent, and self-determination. 
This paper broadens social work’s conceptualization of  peer support 
through theoretical frameworks of  anti-carceral social work, abolition, 
and intersectionality. Social work and its adjacent fields are called to 
urgently center Black liberation, collective healing, and community care 
by advocating for the integration of  formal and informal peer support 
into mental health policy and practice. This paper strategically leans 
into a lineage of  critical peer thought scholarship by utilizing footnotes 
and citations to model the ethical acknowledgment of  peer labor within 
human rights movements. This intentional structure promotes radical 
solidarity that resists the exploitation of  people with lived experience.

Keywords: social work, peer support, mental health, anti-carceral,  
lived experience

Peer Support as a Tool for 
Community Care: 

“Nothing About Us, Without Us”

SHINJINI BAKSHI
THEY, THEM

GUEST ON ANCESTRAL LANDS OF THE INDIGENOUS CHINOOK PEOPLES



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PEER SUPPORT1 AS A TOOL FOR COMMUNITY CARE: 
“NOTHING ABOUT US, WITHOUT US”2

The expression “nothing about us, without us” has long been used 
as a cornerstone of  social justice movements. The United States (U.S.) 
Disability Justice Movement first utilized this expression in the 1990s 
to amplify historically silenced voices and promote community-based 
empowerment (Charlton, 1998; Franits, 2005). Social work activists 
from frontline communities3 continue to highlight the need for policy 
initiatives and social change movements to be catalyzed by peers4 with 
lived experience and culturally specific understandings of  community 
care. This rallying cry demands that Black liberation and anti-carceral5 
approaches to mental health center Black communities and those most 
impacted by carceral systems. This anchoring socio-political demand 
serves as a guide for the field of  social work to organize and mobilize 
itself  towards community-led social change and collective liberation. 

In 2020, Black, Indigenous, and other people of  color (BIPOC)6 
labored at the forefront of  the liberation struggle against racial, 

1 “Peer support” will refer to empathy, encouragement, and assistance related to emotional wellness 
(Penney, 2020).

2 In Critical Disability Studies, activists use this declaration to ensure frontline communities have 
direct access to shaping policy. This phrase also demands that policymakers remain accountable to 
communities that have the most at stake regarding carceral approaches to care (Yarbrough, 2020). 
3 “Frontline communities,” a term originating from the Environmental Justice Movement, will refer 
to communities facing the direct impacts of  racial and social injustices from oppressive systems (Front 
and Centered, 2020).

4 The term “peer” refers to individuals with “lived experience,” or first-hand knowledge gained from 
mental health difference or disability (Mental Health America [MHA], n.d.).

5 “Anti-carceral” mental health uses an abolitionist lens to reject punitive responses to disability or 
difference, and centers Black liberation (the self-determination of  Black people) (Kim, 2018; Critical 
Resistance, n.d.).
“Anti-carceral” frameworks actively interrogate carcerality, defined in Critical Carceral Studies as 
dominant societal structures featuring punishment, discipline, social control, and surveillance (Graby, 
2015).

6 Acknowledging that the popularized term “BIPOC” does not capture the vast nuance across 
different racialized experiences of  racism, this paper will utilize this term in place of  “communities 
(or people) of  color” to decenter whiteness and highlight the distinct differences present in Black and 
Indigenous experiences of  race and racism. 

economic, and gender injustice created by white supremacy. In response 
to the horrific murders of  George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless 
other Black individuals, Black activists sparked a global call-to-action 
to dismantle white supremacy, prompting a national uprising against 
the racist U.S. policing system. Indigenous, Black, and Pacific Islander 
individuals tragically suffered vastly disproportionate impacts from 
COVID-19. U.S. failure to respond to this racialized public health crisis 
caused widespread outcry as members from these communities turned 
to mutual aid7 to confront legacies of  medical racism and working-class 
struggle (APM, n.d.). Trans and Gender Expansive (TGE) young people 
demanded responses to the epidemic of  fatal individual and state violence 
fueled by “anti-Black transmisogyny”8 (Human Rights Campaign, 
2020). Resilient communities on the frontlines of  racial, economic, and 
gender oppression build power through grassroots coalitions oriented 
towards collective liberation that affirms humanity and provides access to 
resources.

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) Movement bridged these social 
concerns, generating cross-movement solidarity by putting a spotlight 
on the nation’s systems rooted in white supremacy—including the U.S. 
mental health system. As a socio-political movement for human rights, 
BLM exposes the ways in which carceral responses to mental health 
crises limit individuals’ freedom and rights to self-determination through 
involuntary psychiatric hospitalization, seclusion, physical or chemical 
restraint, and forced medication compliance. In 2015, people unable 
to access mental health resources were 16 times more likely than other 
individuals to be fatally shot during an encounter with police, yet armed 
police officers were still the default response to people experiencing 
emotional distress (Fuller, et al., 2015). A 2019 study conducted among 

7 “Mutual aid” is a political action and organizing strategy that resists capitalist and colonialist 
forces through networks of  radical community care that provide crisis relief  to under-resourced 
communities (Spade, 2020).

8 “Anti-Black transmisogyny” refers to the targeting of  Black, transgender feminine (trans femme) 
and trans and gender-expansive (TGE) individuals (Human Rights Campaign, 2020). Despite 
discrimination, prejudice, and inequity, Black trans femme activist-organizers continue to lead 
innovative social change initiatives (Ware, 2017).

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young Black men in Baltimore found that individuals with mental health 
diagnoses were more likely to experience police brutality (Smith Lee, 
2019). Anti-carceral logic proposes a radically different approach to 
the mental health movement, embracing traditions of  interdependence 
and emphasizing social connectedness while utilizing a critical systems 
analysis to interrupt carceral response. Social work’s purpose in an 
anti-carceral mental health movement must be not only to center the 
wellness of  those most impacted by violence and oppression, but also to 
uproot methods of  carceral intervention, prioritize self-determination in 
mental health policy, and reimagine the role of  peers in new community 
structures of  life-affirming care (Jacobs et al., 2020). 

AMPLIFYING LIVED EXPERIENCE: “EXISTENCE IS RESISTANCE”9 

There have long been challenges within the field of  mental health 
to standardize the definition of  “peer” and to evaluate the benefits of  
peer roles in care settings. In formal treatment or recovery settings, a 
peer supporter is “someone who has experienced the healing process of  
recovery from psychiatric, traumatic, or substance use challenges and, as 
a result, offers support to promote recovery in traditional mental health 
settings” (iNAPS, 2013, p. 9). While most formalized systems in society do 
not favor positioning peers as leaders, social work can abandon the status 
quo of  institutionalized definitions by advocating for the inclusion of  
peers in all forms of  mental health care delivery.

DRAFTING DEFINITIONS – THE ROLE OF THE PEER

In an attempt to highlight the value of  peer perspectives in social 
work policy and practice, social work professionals often use the term 
“embodied knowing” to refer to knowledge that is gained through and 
residing within the body (Sodhi & Cohen, 2011; Fox, 2016). This paper 
defines a “peer” as an equal, or “someone like me [(or you)],” with 
shared social or demographic identity and lived experience (Shalaby, 

9 This phrase honors trans activists who have resisted and continue to resist social erasure by 
bringing visibility to socially marginalized and politically disenfranchised communities (Seidman, 
2019).

2020; Okoro, 2018, p. 2; Penney, 2020). This definition has been 
criticized for being too broad, as it universalizes and essentializes peer 
identity and oversimplifies group identity, overlooking differences to meet 
certain goals (Voronka, 2016). However, this working definition’s broad 
nature intentionally resists urges to professionalize this distinct identity 
and allows individuals to articulate lived experiences. 

CENTERING JUSTICE: “RHYTHM WITHOUT THE BLUES”10

Social work will benefit from following an intersectional Disability 
Justice approach, operating from the awareness that those “most 
impacted by the legacies of  anti-Black racism, colonialism, heterosexism, 
white supremacy, patriarchal capitalism are the ones furthest from justice 
and access to self-determination” (White, 2020). Created by disabled11 
Queer, Transgender, Black, Indigenous, People of  Color (QTBIPOC) 
activists, Disability Justice frameworks aim to dismantle “intersecting 
legacies of  white supremacy, colonial capitalism, gendered oppression, 
and ableism” (Project Lets, n.d., para. 3). In her Matrix of  Domination 
theory, Patricia Hill Collins demonstrates how ableism interlocks with 
other forms of  oppression (2000). Through the adjacent intersectionality 
theory, Black feminists and critical race theorists assert that carceral 
ableism (socially constructed ideas of  difference or divergence) 
criminalizes and devalues bodies and minds (Crenshaw, 1991; Lewis, 
2020; Berne, 2015). 

EMBRACING ANTI-CARCERAL SOCIAL WORK: “THE WATER WE ARE  
SWIMMING IN”12

Social work has been slow to recognize and implement liberatory 

10 This phrase has inspired community resilience, validating lived experience of  BIPOC and TGE 
individuals and highlighting the Black Feminist Movement’s spirit and message (Collins, 2000).

11 Following leadership from disabled peers in the Disability Justice movement, this paper uses 
identity-first language, positioning disability as an identity to affirm the lived experiences of  peers 
(People with Disability, n.d.).

12 This phrase provides insight into the pervasive anti-Black racism and white supremacy culture 
in the U.S. and embodies a call to dismantle systems of  oppression through social activism (Finn & 
Jacobson, 2003).

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potentials of  anti-carcerality and calls for an empowerment-focused 
paradigm shift to abolitionist praxis13 (Richie & Martensen, 2019; Finn 
& Jacobson, 2003). The field continues to uphold and perpetuate white 
supremacy by utilizing carceral interventions through mental health, 
criminal-legal, child welfare, and even non-profit systems. Anti-carceral 
social work interrupts the carceral state, not only addressing prisons, jails, 
and policing, but also carceral cultures of  social control embedded within 
mental health systems. 

Police brutality is a social determinant of  health impacting the 
emotional well-being of  racialized individuals and contributing to 
mistrust of  medical institutions (Alang et al., 2020; Bor et al., 2018; 
McLeod et al., 2019). Narrative accounts of  young Black men ages 18-24 
summarize feelings of  mental anguish related to police violence, stating 
that police are their “number one fear in life” (Smith Lee, 2019, p. 156). 
Disabled BIPOC students and adults experience a disproportionate use 
of  physical restraint compared to their white counterparts (Katsiyannis 
et al., 2020; Cusack et al., 2018). Black liberation challenges theories 
of  crime and punishment by building anti-carceral, peer-led systems of  
community mental health care.

CRITICALLY CONSCIOUS METHODOLOGY: “PEOPLE  
NOT PROFIT”14 

This theoretical article aims to expand the concept of  “peer support” 
by examining narrow, rigid, and de-politicized applications of  the term 
in empirical research. Search criteria included “formal peer support,” 
service providers in mental health settings, and “informal peer support,” 

13 “Abolition” is a long-term political vision, organizing tool, and broad strategy aiming to eliminate 
imprisonment and policing while creating lasting alternatives to violence and harm (Critical 
Resistance, n.d.). Abolitionists do not support any extension of  carceral punishment, including in 
mental health settings.

14 This phrase serves as a reminder that academic knowledge production is not neutral, and 
academia must side with frontline communities over institutional, elite, or corporate interests. In 
anti-colonial, anti-carceral academia, margins of  society should not be a “site for domination but 
a place of  resistance” (hooks, 1990, p. 343). Social workers break norms of  scientific exploitation 
in under-resourced communities by concentrating efforts towards shifting power to peers with lived 
experience.

community-based providers in non-traditional mental health programs. 
This analysis explores the theory base (specifically within the English 
language) on Disability Justice and carceral ableism, qualitative data 
related to the provision of  peer support in mental health contexts, 
and organizational patterns present in past and current social justice 
movements. The complexities within both the ongoing BLM Movement 
and current socio-political climate influenced the range of  literature 
reviewed for this article.

REFRAMING POSITIONALITY: “THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL”15 

Individuals involved in “peer-run” organizations, such as the 
Consumer Voices Are Born (CVAB)-REACH center, exemplify the 
invaluable power of  peer-based feedback, perspective, and approaches to 
care: 

We did not learn about mental health from a textbook, but from 
our own lived experience. We use this mutuality of  experience 
to connect with others and help our community to see that 
recovery is an achievable reality. (REACH Center, n.d., para. 1)

Elevating lived experience and acknowledging power dynamics present 
in empirical knowledge production is crucial in engaging anti-racist 
work within academia. Intersections of  race, gender, mental health, 
and disability are not just theoretical and academic subjects on which I 
write, but also experiences I live. Writing this article required my own 
emotional labor to survive professionally in taxing academic and clinical 
spaces, and to emotionally synthesize information from personal lived 
experience related to carceral culture in psychiatric institutions and harm 
within mental health care systems. As a guest on Indigenous Chinook 
land and a queer, non-binary person with class privilege and fluctuating 

15 Critical discourses within Feminist and Student Movements encourage scholars to reject the 
“myth of  objectivity” and “hierarchy of  credibility” by actively acknowledging positionality and 
access to power (Yarbrough, 2020). While frontline communities have been historically excluded 
from decision making processes that traditionally center voices of  (often socially-removed) political 
stakeholders, this revolutionary saying positions peers as valuable leaders in community care (Barker, 
2017).

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UPLIFTING THE PEER: “SOLIDARITY NOT CHARITY”16

When Mental Health is viewed as a sociopolitical and ideological 
movement, in addition to a scientific discipline, social workers can 
interrogate oppressive legacies, contextualize harm in BIPOC 
communities, and evaluate transformative potential (Bertolote, 2008). 
Despite a recent surge in political participation, activist-organizers must 
be aware of  pre-existing Feminist, Indigenous, and Disability Justice 
Movements being co-opted by individuals without lived experience. As 
the peer workforce grows, social work must contextualize the anti-carceral 
mental health movement to prevent tokenization and performative 
inclusion of  peers. 

UNPACKING FORMAL PEER SUPPORT: “INTEGRATING INTO A  
BURNING HOUSE”17

With roots in the consumer mental health movement, which worked 
to expand traditional mental health treatment, peer support has always 
been tied to a legacy of  activism (Van Tosh, 2006). Formal peers validate 
distinctive emotional distress related to structural experiences of  inequity 
and injustice (Beresford & Russo, 2015). Community-based participatory 
research has found peers provide support when systems fail to respond 
to Black community needs in culturally-appropriate ways (Corrigan et 
al., 2015). Because peers often “speak the same language” (both literally 
and socioculturally), trusted companionship of  empathetic peers more 
effectively validates experiences of  structural oppression, marginalization, 
and exclusion (Repper, 2013, p. 6; Faulkner & Basset, 2012). Peer support 
services are proven to provide culturally and developmentally appropriate 
care for young people (ages 16-24) with serious mental illness (Ojeda et 
al., 2020). Additionally, a U.S. clinical trial surveyed adults with mental 
illness who had been hospitalized three or more times in 18 months 
and were at risk for recurrent psychiatric hospitalizations. Compared to 

16 This phrase underscores the importance of  mutual aid community organizing in times of  crisis 
(Spade, 2020).

17 This quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., questions the sustainability of  social reform 
movements that do not build social structures anew (Alfieri, 2011).

abilities, I am a consumer-provider of  mental health care invested in 
expanding access to anti-carceral frameworks that prioritize freedom 
of  choice in service of  inter generational healing.. I am not directly 
impacted by anti-Black police violence, nor have I personally experienced 
poverty or carcerality in the legal system. Due to the inherent 
shortcomings in my perspective associated with these positionalities, my 
work remains accountable to peers most impacted by anti-Black racism 
and carceral ableism. 

This paper pushes back against dominant societal and institutional 
impulses to pathologize resistance by utilizing social work’s tradition 
of  “professional resistance” to illuminate counter-narratives, mobilize 
scholars to interrogate the academic norm of  upholding white 
supremacy, and confront unequal institutional power relations (Strier & 
Bershtling, 2016). In an act of  solidarity following Professor Ericka Hart’s 
February 2021 announcement of  unjust termination from Columbia 
School of  Social Work, this paper was intentionally restructured to 
amplify the wisdom of  lived experience (Hart, 2021). This updated 
version is intended to be an active form of  professional resistance against 
upholding anti-Black racism, white supremacy, and transphobia as the 
status quo in academia. Professor Hart’s stated lived experience of  anti-
Black racism mirrors the experiences of  many unnamed QTBIPOC and 
disabled scholars and peers who have also endured traumatic silencing 
by white supremacist institutions. In academic contexts, such silencing 
impacts the most marginalized scholars and derails our scholarly efforts. 
This damaging phenomenon in academia is indicative of  a larger social 
trend in which systemic, institutional, and intersecting personal traumas 
are overlooked, minimized, and made invisible. Professional resistance 
counters the ways institutions exert and maintain power, practice coercive 
control over Black and brown bodies, police our minds, and render us 
disposable. I offer my peer perspective from the margins to invite others 
to “see and create, to imagine alternatives, new worlds” (hooks, 1990, p. 
341).   

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those receiving only standard care, individuals with peer support had 
fewer readmissions and were hospitalized for nine fewer days (Sledge 
et al., 2011). Peer insight on clinical teams improved relationships with 
providers, increased engagement with treatment, reduced symptoms 
of  depression, and improved general recovery outcomes for those with 
severe mental illness (Puschner et al., 2019; Chinman et al., 2014). 
Finally, inclusion of  peers in social work education has also proven 
to expand professional compassion and shift clinical faculty attitudes 
(Repper & Watson, 2012). 

EXAMINING THE CREDIBILITY GAP: “POWER IN THE PEOPLE”18

Some recipients of  care prefer working with licensed mental health 
professionals due to the notion that such clinicians are more competent 
in providing care than practitioners with lived experience (known as 
professionalized peers). Due to lingering stigma, many mental health 
providers with lived experience choose not to self-disclose commonality 
(Harris et al., 2016). Clinicians with lived experience are often labeled 
as “unreliable, dangerous, vulnerable, unpredictable, and lack[ing in] 
the capacity to occupy esteemed roles such as educators” or contribute 
meaningfully in clinical and academic settings (Dorozenko et al., 2016, p. 
906). Peers with professional competency or clinical skills can be seen as 
unrepresentative of  others experiencing marginalization within mental 
health systems (Fox, 2020). Licensed and professionalized clinicians 
without lived experience often perpetuate stigma by expressing skepticism 
about the integrity and safety of  professionalized peers. This devaluing, 
by both individuals seeking treatment and other clinicians, silences peer 
voices in academia and clinical practice. 

Clinical use of  diagnostic criteria from the Diagnostic and 
Statistical Manual of  Mental Disorders (DSM) further reinforces “risk 
consciousness,” referring to the hyper-medicalized focus on solely 
assessing and managing mental health risk factors, as opposed to also 

18 Variations of  this organizing phrase have encouraged communities and individuals globally to 
build collective community power and to funnel resources into the margins of  society (Lisson, 2018).

harnessing protective factors such as community and cultural strength 
(Davidson et al., 2016). The societal shift back to the risk rhetoric of  the 
early mental health movement demonstrates a stronghold of  oppressive 
“one size fits all” Western norms and ableist and colonialist belief  systems 
on mental health practice (Ostrow & Adams, 2012). Formal treatment 
or recovery settings require the peer workforce to abandon more 
radical peer philosophies, such as the right to refuse treatment, forcing 
instead adherence to standard medical models that prioritize identifying 
dysfunction, managing crisis, and eradicating mental health symptoms.  

EVALUATING INFORMAL PEER SUPPORT: “THE REVOLUTION WILL  
NOT BE FUNDED” 19

When larger social systems fail to ensure equitable access to mental 
health support, peer-led mutual aid provides (and has historically 
provided) prevention-centered crisis relief  without reliance on harmful 
systems. With roots in the Psychiatric Survivor Movement,20 informal 
peer support operates outside of  institutions, non-profits, and other 
service delivery systems, and aligns with politically radical legacies of  
community-led mutual aid (Emerick, 1991; Gagne et al., 2018). 

Informal peer support is a unique method of  engagement for 
people who have historically distrusted more formal resources or felt 
alienated from traditional health services (Simpson et al., 2018; Watson, 
2017). Informal peer relationships utilize shared power to normalize 
neurodiversity,21 challenge social stigma, and strengthen community ties 
(Gillard et al., 2015). Relationships with informal peers who have shared 
cultural backgrounds or values are helpful in navigating systems that 
continue to perpetuate ableism and social stigma (Faulkner & Basset, 

19 BIPOC feminists in the Anti-Violence Movement criticize the de-mobilizing effects of  non-
profit involvement in social justice movements—a phenomenon known as the Non-Profit Industrial 
Complex (Smith, 2007).

20 Stemming from 1960s Civil Rights Movement, the Psychiatric Survivor Movement addressed 
people’s experiences of  violence in traditional carceral mental health institutions and served as a 
catalyst, organizing individuals to advocate for the right to refuse treatment and freedom to choose 
alternatives that centered self-determination, agency, and consent (McLean, 2000).

21 The Neurodiversity Movement has roots in the Disability Justice and Mental Health Survivor 
Movements, promoting the need for disability solidarity and recognition of  variations in 
neurocognition (Graby, 2015).

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aligns with the socio-political peer philosophy of  preserving the right to 
self-determination above all else. TGE callers consistently report feeling 
unsafe calling other crisis lines due to fears around denial of  treatment, 
police interaction, harassment in hospitals, and general transphobic 
violence. This intentional anti-carceral approach allows TGE callers to 
affirm the relational importance of  reaching out for support, as opposed 
to avoiding any form of  care for fear of  harm. Serving as a poignant 
example of  anti-carceral peer-developed alternatives built through 
grassroots funding, Trans Lifeline is the only U.S. mental health line that 
has implemented an effective policy against non-consensual active rescue 
(Trans Lifeline, 2020b). 

INVITING DISCUSSION: “DISMANTLE, BUILD, CHANGE”23

Communities continue to be “sites for prevention, intervention, 
and transformation, spaces where interventions can be imagined, 
initiated, and implemented” (Kim, 2018, p. 227). With five million Black 
and “Latine”24 people predicted to lose health insurance due to a loss 
of  employment from COVID-19, the pandemic highlights ongoing 
racism present in the accessibility of  behavioral healthcare (SAMHSA, 
n.d.; Sloan et al., 2020). The mental health field is pressed to tend to 
psychosocial needs of  frontline communities coping with compounding 
threats to well-being (Fisher et al., 2020; Jadwisiak, 2020). As social 
support is a protective factor for well-being, peer support is well-
positioned to address limited access to culturally-responsive mental health 
care (Faulkner & Basset, 2012). Peer support is culturally beneficial to 
minoritized adolescents with adverse childhood experiences, as well as 
to those experiencing suicidality (Brinker, 2017). Making radical changes 
to systemic structures acknowledges histories of  empowered BIPOC 
communities pushing for social liberation. 

23 This phrase grew out of  abolitionist frameworks to dismantle the Prison Industrial Complex 
(Critical Resistance, n.d.). In mental health, it includes building sustainable alternatives that value 
community-wide healing.

24 As opposed to “Latinx,” “Latine” is a non-anglicized, gender-neutral term describing Latin 
American people (Gutierrez, 2020).

2012). One study found Black college students preferred informal peer 
support over formal counseling, as peer support honored their culturally-
specific coping styles (Grier-Reed, 2013). As evidenced by this qualitative 
data, social work must create pathways for peer innovation.

ENVISIONING LIBERATORY FUTURES: “SHOW ME WHAT COMMUNITY  
LOOKS LIKE”22

In 2015, 75% of  people who called the National Suicide Prevention 
Hotline were able to actively engage and collaborate with volunteers, as 
well as de-escalate risk level, despite being initially labeled as an imminent 
risk of  completing suicide (Draper et al., 2015). By contrast, most U.S. 
crisis hotlines maintain policies for initiating in-person police response 
for their callers—a protocol known as “active rescue” (Trans Lifeline, 
2020b). Because research suggests that effective crisis intervention and 
de-escalation often render police intervention unnecessary, frontline 
communities continue to develop anti-carceral, peer-led mental health 
care alternatives rooted in mutual aid (Leach et al., 2019). In BIPOC 
communities, peer-led mutual aid has always been a central survival 
strategy to interrupt institutional harm, prioritizing community care over 
carceral response, and building momentum towards liberation (Crane et 
al., 2020; Spade, 2020).  

Following a peer-led approach, Trans Lifeline developed a crisis 
line “for the trans community, by the trans community” (Trans Lifeline, 
2020a, para. 1). TGE peers intimately understand that police response to 
disabled peers experiencing mental health crisis yields a high likelihood 
of  police use of  harm, forced hospitalization, and deadly force (Trans 
Lifeline, 2020b). Trans Lifeline demonstrates how to “informally” fill a 
culturally-specific mental health need through use of  radical collective 
care policy. The line mitigates violent policing of  the trans community 
through a consensual active rescue policy, never involving police in 
mental health crises without a caller’s explicit consent. Although other 
crisis lines argue that Trans Lifeline’s policy poses liability risks, this policy 

22 This variation of  the bedrock protest slogan “this is what democracy looks like” merges 
organizing and activism efforts to mobilize communities towards collective change (Gillum, 2019).

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to intersecting identities, and navigate oppressive mental health care 
systems. Although developing clear models of  peer support would aid 
future studies, professionalizing peer support may restrict the healing 
nature of  holistic relational dynamics (Faulkner & Basset, 2012). 
Independent of  current failing systems, communities will continue 
developing structures of  mutual aid-based informal peer support, 
warranting urgent advocacy to include peer support in all mental health 
care delivery.  

ENGAGING RADICAL IMAGINATIONS: “PANDEMIC AS PORTAL”27

Anti-carceral social work aligns with the assertion that “there can 
be no health equity when certain groups fear the harm and murder of  
their families and community by the state” (Jacobs, et al., 2020, p. 19). 
Engaging true mutuality with one another requires shifting leadership 
structures from dominant groups to those most impacted by ableism, 
anti-Black racism, and transphobia. Peer support is both an abolitionist 
act of  care and an embodiment of  mutual aid. Moving forward, social 
workers are called to interrogate the currently existing frameworks 
around mental health by examining sociopolitical influences preventing 
peers from being cultural agents of  change (Gillard, 2019). Social workers 
are invited to apply an anti-colonialist, anti-carceral lens to qualitative 
inquiry and to uplift the work of  peers (Yarbrough, 2020; Archer-Kuhn, 
2020). Social policy experts consider how an informal peer support 
safety net may alleviate burdens and costs of  mental health care delivery 
through public health saving (Puschner et al., 2019; Young, 2020). 
Clinicians have the power to break from reliance on policing and carceral 
interventions. Until there are more sustainable solutions to compounding 
social crises, social workers can ensure frontline communities are leading 
conversations about anti-carceral care. 

 
 

27 Arundhati Roy’s April 2020 piece in the Financial Times provides global context of  the pandemic 
and encourages a break with the past, collectively reimagining a more liberatory future.

EXPOSING LIMITATIONS: “SILENCE IS VIOLENCE”25

While extant literature speaks to the lived experiences of  some 
marginalized groups, the overall dearth of  research within this area 
misrepresents and distorts unique individual experiences of  people 
with multiple marginalized identities. The divide between academic 
scholarship and community needs directly relates to  how colonialist 
research institutions continue to objectify, extract from, and profit off of  
BIPOC without tending to their unique socio-political demands. This 
alarming observation overshadows drawbacks in the literature, which 
include vague understandings of  peer support mechanisms. Solidarity 
research26 specifically engages frontline communities in critical political 
dialogue and change-oriented goal setting, while empirical research 
generally upholds harmful colonialist notions of  objectivity and scientific 
expertise, thus preventing peers with lived experience from producing 
knowledge within academic systems (Yarbrough, 2019). Honoring 
expertise gained through lived experience and legitimizing labor involved 
in informal peer support does not necessitate empirical evidence. Due to 
this lack of  empirical “expertise,” it is unlikely informal peer support will 
receive access to certain funding streams. Communities will continue to 
build solidarity in the margins and will respond in the ways they always 
have when systems have failed them: by determining what works best for 
them culturally, regardless of  an empirical evidence base. 

The limited empirical literature on crisis work is predominantly 
written through a white cisgender lens. Such a lens produces under-
developed theories that inadequately respond to the specific needs 
of  disabled QTBIPOC and fail to acknowledge the unique ways 
individuals within this demographic experience complex trauma, relate 

25 Despite social work’s ethical obligation to social justice, the field has perpetuated white supremacy 
through silence on ongoing anti-Black racism (National Association of  Social Workers North 
Carolina Chapter [NASW-NC], 2020). This saying speaks to the colonialist roots of  anti-Black 
racism and violence in research (Women Scientists Leadership, 2020).

26 “Solidarity research” diverges from participatory action research in that it resists tokenization 
by affirming marginalized groups as experts and by focusing data collection and political analysis 
on critical dialogue of  policy-relevant “structural sources of  group-differentiated stratification and 
harm” (Yarbrough, 2019, p. 62).

PEER SUPPORT AS A TOOL FOR COMMUNITY CARE SHINJINI BAKSHI



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PEER SUPPORT AS A TOOL FOR COMMUNITY CARE SHINJINI BAKSHI

DRAWING CONCLUSIONS: “BLACK TRANS  
LIVES MATTER”28 

Anti-carceral social work policy and practice require 
acknowledgment of  the radical political contributions of  peers with 
lived experience, willingness to shift power to frontline communities, and 
investment in Black futures. With new insights into the added socio-
political benefit of  integrating a peer support safety net into structures 
of  community care, social workers can push the field of  mental health 
towards its anti-carceral future. Individuals with lived experience are not 
only worthy of  dignity, care, and healing, but they are also paramount 
in driving innovation and leading movements towards liberation. 
Integrating this ideological truth into practice will help future generations 
of  social workers and mental health practitioners minimize emotional 
distress, repair social harm, and dismantle white supremacy. Social 
workers rally behind peers and frontline communities to honor the lives 
of  Black trans ancestors and build new liberatory structures of  care in 
which peers can use their collective wisdom, knowledge, and skills to 
facilitate intergenerational healing.

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PEER SUPPORT AS A TOOL FOR COMMUNITY CARE SHINJINI BAKSHI

SHINJINI BAKSHI (they/them) is a clinical social worker with 
lived experience who graduated from Columbia University in 2020 
with a Master of  Science in Social Work. Shinjini holds Bachelor 
degrees in Psychology and Criminology from Schreyer Honors 
College at The Pennsylvania State University. Shinjini currently 
works as a Co-Occurring Therapist at Achieving Change Together 
(ACT) Northwest, a peer-based adolescent recovery program.


