Take This Job And..., 4

I really believe that peer support workers make up the least understood category of employee in the mental health system.  We are simultaneously client and colleague, in most cases.  In our monthly meetings many of us discuss our medications, side-effects and hospitalizations the way other staff meetings are full of chatter about what's on TV, who won the game and where you're going for vacation this year.

It is not an easy or comfortable fit and for me it is even less so given my rather unorthodox history of treatment and recovery.  I have never been on medication and have never been hospitalized for psychiatric reasons and for this reason I often feel out of the loop among my colleagues.  I also don't buy this false empathy that is expected to arise out of referring to our clients as peers instead of clients.  This serves no real value except to further ghettoize and stigmatize the peer support workers in the work place.  It is a quiet way of accepting that we are damaged, that we are not considered peers by our professional co-workers, but a rather specialized class of client, making us professionally somewhat less and something inferior.

We are the Rodney Dangerfields of the mental health field.  We don't get no respect.

We are the chopped liver section in the deli display case.

Chronic low pay entrenches stigma.  This I said to a person in upper management.  Soon after, I was threatened with dismissal if I didn't shut up about the injustices that have become for peer support workers our daily bread.

Others in upper management have cynically suggested that peer support workers be given the lion's share of positions in a future mental health treatment facility.  We are after all famous for our empathy and our ability to identify so closely with the recovery process, having been there ourselves.  Since they would have no intention of giving us a pay raise we would continue to do work that is worth three times the market value of the twelve glorious bucks an hour that we have been earning for the past six years.  Think of all the money that would be saved for the taxpayer.  Think of the gigantic raises that upper management and administration could award themselves with (but they do that already).  Think of the absolute cynical insult to the dignity and intelligence of both peer support workers and the various rehab professionals, nurses and social workers we would be expected to replace.

It is a challenge living in a state of cognitive dissonance and still being able to do my job well.  I love my clients and my coworkers alike.  This is one of the richest most rewarding jobs I have ever done.  It is the chronic lack of respect and recognition that presents me with my greatest challenges.  For the very fact that our profession requires us to bare some of the most intimate secrets of our souls, our experience of mental illness and recovery, in order to do our job well, we surely deserve decent remuneration for our work.  A living wage and respect would be a lovely way to begin.