Intentional Peer Support (IPS) evolved out of the consumer activist movement in the States.

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Intentional Peer Support (IPS) evolved out of the consumer activist movement in the States.

The person most responsible for bringing Intentional Peer Support to the world is Shery Mead.

Shery evolved the kaupapa of IPS through observing the limitations of Medical Model treatment of mental distress where the whole emphasis of “treatment” is to locate all the problems within the brain of the person receiving services: “What is wrong with you”, rather than asking the obvious question of “What happened to you?”.

The first approach focuses on giving the person a diagnosis and then seeing through this lens. When this happens, the “actual” person tends to get lost.

Taking the latter approach is referred to as “trauma-informed” ie we are recognising that mental distress is much more likely to originate from a range of traumatic experiences, rather than a biological “fault” with the brain.

This opens up the possibility to approach mental distress much more as a “human” problem, requiring a “human” rather than a medical solution.