Strengths and challenges of peer coaches for supported education in colleges and universities.

• DOI: 10.1037/prj0000390
• Publication Date: 2019-10-07T13:21:56Z
• Authors: Patrick W. Corrigan; Lindsay Sheehan; Gary Walley; Sang Qin; Katherine Niewegl...; Kiersten Maurer
• Keywords: Adult; Community-Based Participatory Research; Universities; 4. Education; Mentoring; Social Support; Peer Group; Young Adult; 03 medical and health sciences; 0302 clinical medicine; Mentally Ill Persons; Humans; Students; Qualitative Research

Objective Peer coaches are an important element in supported education programs. Peers students with lived experience recovery. As coaches, they provide on-campus support to assist psychiatric disabilities. Method A community-based participatory research (CBPR) team interviewed 44 participants including disabilities, faculty, and staff about their perceptions of peer coaches. Thematic analysis was used analyze interview transcripts. Results Possible strengths included helping navigate services, addressing sense being alone, managing school demands. Challenges finding suited peers, burnout, providing training supervision, matching students. Conclusions implications for practice list ingredients within a program generated. Future should determine the modifier these key ingredients. Our findings informed development coaching which is now going through feasibility, fidelity, impact evaluation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).