CAPITAL Peer Support

What is CAPITAL Peer Support?

A CAPITAL Peer is someone who offers friendly, informal and confidential support drawing on their own lived experience of mental health challenges.

​Peers are trained by CAPITAL.

CAPITAL is a charity run for people who use mental health services by people who use mental health services. CAPITAL Peer Support Team is independent from Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

​Peers will facilitate some groups you might attend during your stay in hospital. They will also be available to meet with you individually at times on the ward.

CAPITAL Peer Support is currently available in West Sussex at:

• Langley Green Hospital, Crawley
• Meadowfield Hospital, Worthing
• Oaklands, Chichester

What could CAPITAL Peer Support offer me?

• Someone to talk to who has personal experience of using mental health services.
• Speaking in confidence.
• Listening to you with empathy.
• Guidance about self-help strategies and sharing what has worked for themselves or others.
• Signposting to sources of specialist help or advice.
• Wellbeing activities.
• Support you to prepare for and get the most out of your ward rounds.
• Help to participate more in your care planning.

CAPITAL Peer Support cannot:

• Advocate on your behalf at ward rounds / reviews, tribunals and so forth. However, we could signpost you to an advocate, or talk through with you how you might manage better yourself.
• Accompany you at ward rounds / reviews.
• Accompany you out of the hospital grounds — please ask your nursing team if you need support with this.
• Do things for you — but we will help you think about ways that might make it easier for you to do things for yourself.

Confidentiality

CAPITAL Peers do not read or write in your clinical notes.

After meeting with you individually they will agree with you a short summary of the key points you have discussed.

Nothing you discuss will be passed on to your care team (or anyone else) unless you have agreed this.

However, if you say something which raises significant concern about your safety or the safety of someone else, the we have a duty to hand this on to your care team.

In this case the situation will always be discussed with you first unless that would compromise your safety, or the safety of another person.

How would you describe your role?

As peer supporters at CAPITAL, we use our training, lived experience and our own mental health journey to support people who have been hospitalised because of their mental health. We provide support, empathy and encouragement to help people move forward on their journey.

As a peer, I’m on the same level as the people I support on the ward. I’m independent of NHS staff and, because of my own experience, I know where they have been and the kinds of things they may be struggling with, and so I can support them in the way that they need.

Talking to a peer is very different to talking to a clinical professional. People tend to open up more to us, because we have a personal connection with their predicament. Over time, you build a rapport with people and they start to open up, and you build trust.

I typically support someone from when they come into hospital to when they are ready to leave and go back out into the community. Some people may stay in hospital for a few days; others for a whole year. I talk to people. We do colouring, artwork and knitting. I brush their hair. I paint their nails if they ask for that. And as we do something together, we talk and, crucially, we build trust.​

I work in two wards at Langley Green Hospital in Crawley twice a week and have been supporting people for the last year and nine months.

What brought you to CAPITAL and to becoming a peer?

I’ve been grappling with my mental health from a young age. I left school with no qualifications, I was bullied at school and I didn’t have a great home environment. I struggled with an eating disorder, self-image and depression, and I had alcohol and addiction issues. After getting married and living and working in Bognor for a few years, I moved back to my home town of Crawley and that’s when things started spiralling for me. I began self-harming. I was hospitalised, because I was considered a risk to myself, and I spent the next four years in different hospitals. I had a good few years after my second son was born, but then ended up in Langley Green Hospital in Crawley when I started spiralling again.

While I was there, I met a peer from CAPITAL. She explained what CAPITAL was, and she asked me if I wanted to become a member. I did CAPITAL’s members training and joined this amazing community. I felt like I had a family for the first time – a family that didn’t judge or comment on what I did and really believed in me.

There was an opportunity to train as a peer supporter. So I did the 12-week course, combined with 90 hours of home learning. It’s a Level 4 course and the equivalent of completing the first year at University. It’s the first thing I have ever passed in my whole life and I felt incredibly proud. I had to complete a practical assessment at the hospital, before I was able to practise on the ward, but I passed that with flying colours and began my work as a peer supporter.

Why is peer support so important in mental health?

The understanding and empathy that peer supporters have with a person who is struggling with their mental health can’t be under-estimated. Professionals have in-depth education and training to help them care for people with mental health needs and prescribe and administer medication if appropriate. But peers can give clients answers that a clinical member of staff wouldn’t be able to give.

Clinicians develop through their education and training, but not necessarily through lived experience of mental health like peers do. That’s why CAPITAL’s motto is “clients and professionals in training and learning”. We have a culture of continuous learning for peers with lots of opportunities for training and self-development. And we work with medical professionals to help them understand about mental health from a more personal perspective – and to hopefully increase their understanding and empathy for people who are struggling.

Peer support is also really important, because it gives people hope for their own recovery. They see us helping others through our work and that gives them hope for the future. We help them to understand that a journey is never-ending and that you move forward one step at a time. I am still on my journey, but now I believe that I can have a happy life. If you have a mental health condition, you can still have the life you want.

My story begins in the autumn of 2007; my eldest child had just gone off to university. I felt sad and there was empty feeling inside, but I didn’t for one minute think that there was anything more to it than that. A few weeks went by, and I was gradually losing interest in life, I wasn’t eating properly, and I was making excuses not to go out. In the end a good friend of mine said that she was getting worried about me and urged me to go to see my GP, to appease I said that I would, but thinking that I knew better I didn’t go.

By this time my husband was starting to notice but again I managed to fob him off. A few more weeks went by, and I think even I knew I wasn’t right but not wanting to bother the GP I left it, eventually after my friend spoke to me again; this time I capitulated and made an appointment. The GP asked me lots of questions and then said that he thought that I was suffering from anxiety and/or depression, but he asked me to go back in weeks time because he wanted to assess me. I duly went back the following week and the GP said he wanted to put me on an antidepressant which I agreed to. Starting on a low dose I was going regularly to the GP until he had me on a dose which he was happy. Nothing remarkable about that I hear you say and no you’re right.

Three years later in the autumn of 2010, my second child left school and went to work, by this time I had been successfully weaning myself off of my tablets until I was on the starting dose. There became a shift in my behaviour again I was not eating properly I was shutting myself away and I was becoming suicidal. My husband was working away up in Manchester at the time so there was myself and my two boys at home, I was struggling to cook and when I did, I couldn’t eat it and I was becoming very aggressive. I remember going back to the GP and he increased my antidepressant until I was on the full dose. Around this time, my youngest son and I went up to Manchester one weekend to visit my husband there being an exhibition that we wanted to go to. I was struggling but I tried to pretend that everything was okay and thought that I was doing a good job until on the train going home, we had a first-class ticket and there had been problems and so the train was ‘mega’ busy and so therefore the train was deregulated and there was two men sitting next to us.

This was bad enough but then the one sitting next to me started making phone calls in a really loud voice; I don’t know what came over me but I starting getting really aggressive with this stranger next to me, I don’t remember much but I do remember that this chap was then being was aggressive back and my poor fifteen-year old son was trying to calm me down and he was explaining to these strangers that I wasn’t well, I felt so embarrassed then.

Then everything becomes a bit of a blur, my husband had to come home and I become under the care of crisis team. It was decided that I needed to be admitted to hospital and I ended in Langley Green hospital where I was weaned off my original antidepressant and put on new one. I was assigned a care co-ordinator and two weeks later I was back home and started back on the road to recovery again. With the help of my care co-ordinator, I was able to make sense of things and get my life back on track.

But sadly, that’s not the end of the story because three years later in 2013 when my youngest son left school things to spiral out of control again, I was trying to deal with the feeling of uselessness on my own but not very successfully. Whenever anyone asked if I was okay, I would say that I was fine, but the truth was that I wasn’t okay I was ashamed to be feeling like I was.

Here I was living a comfortable life with a husband who really cares for me, who works hard and is successful. I work because I want and not because I need to. I have brought three well adjusted children who I’m proud of, so what more could I want, so I started to blame myself that it was all my fault and that I had no right to feel like I did. I stopped eating and started making excuses whenever I was invited out.

Eventually I became under the crisis team again, and after a few days it was decided that I should be admitted to hospital again. Sadly, this time it wasn’t a quick fix, I was to be in there for ten weeks. For the first three weeks I seemed to be getting worse, I shut myself away in my room and the pills they tried had an adverse effect. Then came one particular evening I was feeling desperate, my husband had been in to visit and I just wanted to go with him; in desperation spoke to a nurse but felt that they didn’t care.

I laid on my bed sobbing I could feel myself getting more and more worked up but was powerless to stop myself. I remember looking over at my handbag and as I looked it occurred to me that it had a detachable strap; before I knew what I was doing I had taken it off and I put round my neck, I was tightening the strap, pulling it tighter and tighter but it didn’t seem to be having any effect. After what felt like hours the same nurse came to find me as I hadn’t come for my meds, and when she saw me, all hell broke loose. She sounded the alarm at the same time trying to loosen the strap, she told me not to be stupid which made me pull it tighter. Eventually they cut the strap off and I’m taken to the clinic where I had to be assessed.

To cut a long story short that was the turning point for me I was seen by a different doctor and was given one-to-one sessions with a psychologist. I was put on different medication and at the same time was given help to regain my confidence.

Prior to my breakdown I had been doing a counselling course, I had almost qualified and naturally felt very disappointed but at the same I came across a peer-support worker and I wanted to find out about it.

Seven weeks later just before Easter I was discharged, it had been a long hard struggle, I felt really bad having put my family through all that with me; I felt really guilty.

It was having the one-to-one sessions with a psychologist that was turning point for me, he helped me to be able to regain my selfworth and to rebuild my life again.

– Carol
CAPITAL Peer