Graham Smith uses his lived experience to help others with mental health difficulties.

Graham was highly commended in the Care and Compassion category at this year’s NELFT Make a Difference Awards for his work as a Peer Support Worker.

Graham’s experience of mental health has helped him to become a Peer Support Worker to help others, he said:

“I believe that the role of a peer support worker is to use our lived experience of mental health issues to support other people who are having issues with their own mental health, to work alongside them in an individually tailored person-centred way and to show them that there is hope when they feel hopeless.

“I wanted to become a peer support worker to be able to help make a positive difference to other people’s lives and to be an example of hope for a bright future when, we as people with poor mental health, cannot imagine that life will ever improve.”

Graham has taken additional steps to be able to become a Peer Support Worker by developing his skillset:

“I completed a level two counselling course, mental health first aid course, and peer leader training during the time of being unwell and I likened it to putting tools into my toolbox to help myself and others when I felt able to do so.

“I have been told by some people I supported that I am an ‘inspiration’ and someone said to me ‘you actually get it and really understand what I am going through, not like some people who have learnt about it from a book’.”

Graham’s dedication to his patients have helped them to achieve lifelong milestones:

“A client’s life was being controlled by his anxiety when I first started to support him, and he was lacking in confidence and self-belief.

“With my own and his care coordinators support and encouragement he has been to Wales and climbed Mount Snowdon twice, completed a Royal Parks half marathon and a peer leader training with Mind in Tower Hamlets, Newham and Redbridge and  now volunteers with homeless charities.”

He said about the awards:

“This may sound cheesy, but it means the world to me to have been highly commended and it’s something that I am really proud to have achieved and I believe that it is a testament to how far I have come in my mental health journey.

“The award shows that the work that I do with my clients has been recognised by others as upholding the values of the Trust.”

To find out more about Peer Support Workers, visit: Peer Support Workers | NELFT NHS Foundation Trust