A new qualitative study published in the Community Mental Health Journal highlights the emotional and moral weight carried by peer support workers (PSWs) in Poland’s mental health system.
The study, led by Justyna Klingemann of the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology, documents how PSWs experience distress when faced with service user suicidality, aggression, unforeseen crises, and institutional constraints that prevent them from acting according to their values.
“The PSWs participating in the study acknowledge that working with patients experiencing mental crises is undoubtedly emotionally demanding,” the authors write.
“They are exposed to situations where patients may have suicidal thoughts or attempts, or may become aggressive. Furthermore, working on a psychiatric ward is fraught with various unforeseen situations… A number of experiences that could be characterised as moral distress were identified in the narratives of those participating in the study, which can be understood as a combination of the individual’s values and the barriers they face in taking what they believe to be the right action.”
The study sheds light on how individuals with lived experience, employed to humanize mental health care, often encounter institutional constraints that replicate the very dynamics they were meant to challenge. It reveals how systems that valorize personal recovery may still marginalize peer workers through hierarchies, lack of support, and conflicting ethical demands.
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