What is Peer Support?
Peer Support is perinatal mental health and wellbeing support for you, provided by Peer practitioners.
In other words, Peer Support is all about parents helping other parents.
At PANDA, Peer practice is embedded across all programs, and we also have a dedicated Peer Support program.
Our Peer practitioners are trained professionals who use their lived (and living) experience of perinatal mental health and wellbeing challenges to offer support and hope to you through shared experience.
Peer practitioners empower you to find your own way through any perinatal mental health and wellbeing challenges you may be having.
PANDA Peer practitioners can meet you where you are in those early days of parenthood and can share their own personal stories of recovery as well as empower you to participate in your own care and decision making about the support you need.
Peer Support has been at the heart of PANDA for forty years. The Helpline began in 1983 after two women experiencing postnatal depression saw the need for a support group for mums affected by perinatal mental health and wellbeing challenges. With the support of their local maternal child health nurse, they set up Australia’s first perinatal Peer Support service.
PANDA Helpline's Peer Support Program offers support to all expecting and new parents and their support people, including healthcare providers. Anyone impacted by perinatal mental health and wellbeing challenges can call PANDA for support.
Who provides the Peer Support service?
PANDA Peer practitioners come from a variety of backgrounds but what connects them is their own experience with perinatal mental health and wellbeing challenges.
All our Peer practitioners in the Peer Support team have undergone specialist PANDA perinatal Peer Support training. Our wonderful Peer practitioners are supported and supervised by our Peer Team Leaders.
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What happens when I call the PANDA Helpline?
Many Peer practitioners join PANDA to ‘give back’ and support callers, providing hope and connection to the next generation of parents. Some still have babies and toddlers at home and others are empty-nesters, but they are all connected by their desire to use their own personal experiences to help others.
The ‘lived experience’ of our PANDA Peer practitioners
Lived experience is what we call the knowledge that is gained by personal experience, (specifically in relation to mental health and wellbeing challenges), as opposed to learned via study or employment.
At PANDA, lived experience relates to a personal experience of perinatal mental health and wellbeing challenges, as well as recovery. This may include diagnosis, service use (private or public, community or clinical, traditional or alternative) and the impact of these experiences on their lives.
Our PANDA Peer Support team has lived experience with:
- Anxiety – ante and/or postnatal
- Depression - ante and/or postnatal
- Miscarriage
- Fertility challenges
- Family violence
- Single parenting
- Covid parenting
- Bi-polar disorder
- Multiple births
- Parenting with chronic health conditions
- Hyperemesis Gravidarum
- Identity loss
- Perfectionism
- Neurodiverse families experiencing ADHD and Autism
- Admission to perinatal psychiatric inpatient units
- Intrusive thoughts
- Birth trauma
- Complex trauma
- Perinatal psychosis
- Queer parenting/LGBTQIA+ parenting
- Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
- Self-harm
- Suicidal ideation/thoughts of suicide
Benefits of Peer Support
Everyone who calls the PANDA helpline can benefit from Peer Support.
Peer Support has existed for many decades across a variety of sectors. Research has found that Peer Support provides multiple unique benefits compared to other types of support including:
- Providing hope through positive self-disclosure.
- Role-modelling self-care and skills to negotiate daily life.
- The peer relationship – a Peer practitioners' ability to empathise directly and immediately.
- Reduced inpatient service use, including shorter hospital stays if needed.
- Improved relationships with providers and care engagement.
- Higher levels of hopefulness for recovery.
- Increased self-esteem.
- Improved sense of hope and empowerment.
- Reduction in the impact of stigma.
- Better decision-making skills.
- Improved social functioning.
- Decreased psychiatric symptoms (i.e. decreased rates or lengths of hospitalisation).
- Lower rates of isolation, larger social networks.
- Increased support seeking.
Meet one of our Peer practitioners
"Having had my own lived experience I understood the importance of someone listening and holding space for me to tell my story and I really wanted to be able to give back and provide that for others."
Want to become a Peer practitioner?
As valued members of PANDA’s National Perinatal Anxiety and Depression Helpline team, Peer Support Volunteers provide a unique service that complements clinical support and works closely alongside PANDA’s clinical teams.
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PANDA National Helpline
Find someone to talk to, Monday to Saturday.
1300 726 306
Call 000 for police and ambulance if you or someone else are in immediate danger
Talk with friends or family
Consider talking about how you are feeling with someone you trust. This might be a friend or family member. Once you starting talking you might be surprised at how many others have had similar experiences and the support they can provide you.
Talk with your doctor
Talking with your doctor can be an important step to getting the help you need. They should be able to give you non-judgemental support, assessment, diagnosis, and ongoing care and treatment. They can also refer you to specialists such as a counsellor, psychologist or psychiatrist.
Get help now
If you are having suicidal thoughts or are feeling disorientated it’s important to get help immediately. PANDA is not a crisis service, if you need immediate support call Lifeline 13 11 14 (24/7).
PANDA CHATBOT
Chat to Dot
Meet Dot. They’re here to support you to explore your mental health and wellbeing during pregnancy and as a new parent.
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