From Crisis to Collaboration: Supporting Survivors with Stigmatized Mental Health Experiences

People with shared lived experiences have been supporting one another for ages, making peer support a vital source of hope and healing within communities. This is especially true for survivors of domestic and sexual violence, and yet, our advocacy programs sometime struggle with how to encourage survivor-led peer support while also making space for different trauma responses, support needs, and healing journeys.

This webinar offers information and strategies for creating Accessible, Culturally Responsive, and Trauma-Informed (ACRTI) environments of peer support in advocacy programs. We will discuss peer support models that align with advocacy principles and lift up mutuality, reciprocity, and survivor leadership as core values. Whether beginning or expanding peer support programming, participants will learn about strategies for making peer support accessible across experiences of trauma and mental health challenges, re-centering peer support as a core pathway of hope and healing.

• Learning Objectives
  • 1.    Participants will explore the intentions and values of survivor-lead peer support.
  • 2.    Participants will identify strategies for keeping mutuality and shared responsibility at the center of peer support conversations and relationships.
  • 3.    Participants will generate strategies for creating program environments to sustain survivor-led peer support.
    

As advocates, we are here to support survivors in crisis. At the same time, it can be challenging to know how to best respond when a survivor is experiencing suicidality or self-injury. It’s not uncommon for advocates to feel unprepared, unsupported, or scared when faced with these situations. This webinar provides advocates and advocacy programs with practical information and strategies to overcome these challenges and offer proactive, compassionate, and survivor-led support for survivors experiencing suicidality and or self-injury. Using an Accessible, Culturally Responsive, Trauma-Informed (ACRTI) approach, this session includes what advocacy programs can do to care for themselves and one another at the individual, organizational, and community levels.

• Learning Objectives:
  • 1. Participants will learn about the warning signs, risks, and protective factors for suicide and non-suicidal self injury.
  • 2. Participants will identify strategies to emotionally support survivors experiencing suicidality or self-injury, as well as how to support themselves before, during, and after crises.
  • 3. Participants will explore strategies to build emotional and physical safety with survivors experiencing suicidality

In this webinar, we’ll challenge dominant cultural narratives that pathologize experiences like hearing voices and other alternative perceptions. We’ll dispel common myths and explore perspectives that validate these experiences as meaningful responses shaped by not only trauma and oppression, but also by spirituality and culture. Learn strategies for empowering those with differing perceptions while overcoming stigma through relationship-building and emotional support. The session will equip both advocates and organizations with strategies to address stigma and create more inclusive, affirming spaces.

• Learning Objectives:
  • 1. Understand the diversity of alternative perceptions beyond pathology, examining how media bias and culture shape assumptions while dispelling common myths.
  • 2. Explore strategies to address stigmatization of alternative perceptions as organizations and advocates.
  • 3. Develop practical advocacy skills centered on compassionate relationships, emotional support, and community care to empower those with alternative perceptions.

Research has consistently documented that experiencing abuse by an intimate partner increases one’s risk for developing a range of mental health and substance use conditions. Experiencing multiple forms of trauma, including structural violence and marginalization, further amplifies these risks. Less well recognized, are the ways that people who abuse their partners engage in coercive tactics targeted toward their partner’s mental health or substance use as part of a broader pattern of abuse and control. For survivors of IPV, responding to trauma raises another set of concerns, particularly when the trauma is unremitting and “symptoms” reflect a response to ongoing danger and coercive control. This webinar will provide an overview of the impact of IPV on mental health, best practices for offering mental health treatment in the context of IPV and other trauma, and suggestions for incorporating a culturally responsive, IPV- and trauma-informed approach. 

Attendees will gain insights into:

• • • Mental health impacts of IPV and mental health coercion
    • Challenges in treating complex trauma in the context of ongoing abuse
    • Principles of IPV-specific and trauma-informed care
    • Adapting interventions for IPV survivors’ needs

Whether you’re a mental health professional, advocate, or program leader, this webinar will deepen your understanding of these critical issues. 

Partner-inflicted brain injury (PIBI) is a common experience among survivors of domestic and sexual violence when physical abuse is present. When survivors access services, their experiences of PIBI are frequently overlooked due to symptom overlap with mental health issues, leaving them uncertain about where to seek appropriate help.This webinar will provide advocates insight into potential overlapping symptoms related to PIBI and mental health concerns while offering strategies to provide proactive, survivor-led support. These strategies will utilize an Accessible, Culturally Responsive, Trauma-Informed (ACRTI) approach that advocates and mental health providers can implement at the individual, staff, and organizational levels.  

Learning Objectives: 

1. Participants will learn about the similarities and differences between mental health and partner-inflicted brain injury in the context of domestic violence.
2. Participants will identify mental health coercion tactics and how it can intersect with survivors who have also experienced PIBI. 
3. Participants will explore strategies to build emotional and physical safety with survivors who have experienced mental health and partner-inflicted brain injury.