This dissertation explores the integration of Youth Peer Support Workers (YPSWs) in specialist Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and examines the impact of mental health challenges on physicians. Young people with severe mental health conditions often feel isolated, and YPSWs, young adults with lived experiences, can provide unique support, fostering hope, trust, and autonomy. Despite their potential, embedding YPSWs in CAMHS remains challenging. Through a systematic literature review and qualitative studies with YPSWs, clinicians, and young people, this research identified key barriers and facilitators in the integration process, as well as six YPSW roles: engagement, research, education, advocacy, navigation, and emotional support. Facilitators included clear role definitions, supervision, on-the-job training, and team readiness, while barriers included communication differences, power imbalances, low role visibility, role ambiguity, limited organizational readiness, and inadequate support structures. Additionally, this dissertation explored the impact of mental health challenges and treatment on physicians, highlighting how medical culture can undermine well-being and discourage help-seeking. Appropriate treatment, however, supported recovery and enhanced practice through more compassionate and reflective care. Overall, the dissertation calls for a cultural shift in (child and adolescent mental) healthcare, embracing lived experiences not as a liability, but as a valuable source of knowledge.
C.R.M. de Beer (Thu,) studied this question.