Insight
The Next Layer: What Therapy’s Growth Tells Us About the Future of Peer Services
Therapy went from psychiatry-only to a $28B industry. The structural pattern that made it scale is now showing up in peer services.
By Peerakeet
The Peerakeet Pulse
Peer support trends, behavioral health policy, and what we’re learning as we build.
Policy
The implications of cutting behavioral health funding, even when peer services prevail
When behavioral health budgets get cut, peer services are often the first casualty — even when they're the most cost-effective intervention on the table.
By Peerakeet
Insight
The origins of peer services: The movement before the workforce
Peer support didn't start as a workforce — it started as a movement. Tracing the history from self-help groups through activism to certified peer specialists.
By Peerakeet
Policy
Making the Financial Case for Peer Services Without Losing the Point
How to make the financial case for peer support without reducing peers to a cost-saving lever. Talking ROI while keeping the work human.
By Peerakeet
Policy
Medicaid 1115 Waivers and the Expansion of Peer Support
How Section 1115 Medicaid waivers are expanding peer support coverage across states — and what the expansion means for people in recovery and the peers who serve them.
By Peerakeet
Insight
Who is a Peer? The Workforce Built on Shared Experience
What makes someone a certified peer support specialist — lived experience, certification standards, scope of practice, and the operational gaps still facing the field.
By Peerakeet
Insight
From Paper Charts to Portals
How health records evolved from paper charts to modern EHRs — and why they still can't capture the work peer support specialists actually do.
By Peerakeet
Insight
Running on Fumes: Addressing Burnout in Mental Healthcare
Clinician burnout isn't a personal failing — it's a systems problem. Why mental healthcare is running out of workers, and what peer support can absorb.
By Peerakeet
Insight
Navigating Change and Isolation in Your 20s
Loneliness, transition, and identity loss in your 20s. Why this decade hits mental health so hard — and how connection through shared experience helps.
By Peerakeet
Policy
When Healing is Negotiable: The Instability of Mental Health Funding
Mental health funding is politically contingent and chronically unstable. What that means for people in recovery when budgets get cut mid-cycle.
By Peerakeet
Insight
The New Year Pressure Nobody Talks About
Why New Year resolutions drive shame and disengagement for people in recovery — and why sustained peer connection beats willpower as a protective factor.
By Peerakeet
Research
Research
Safety First: The Neuroscience of Why Peer Support Works
The neuroscience of why peer support works when clinical care can't reach people in the moment. How shared-experience connection regulates the nervous system.
By Peerakeet
Research
Outlasting the Urge: What Neuroscience Teaches Us About Cravings
What neuroscience teaches us about cravings and how to ride them out. Why urges peak and fall in predictable waves — and how peer support changes the curve.
By Peerakeet
Get the Pulse in your inbox
Weekly insights on peer support, policy changes, and what we’re building.
Subscribe on Substack