CLEARINGHOUSE GIVES PEER-SUPPORT PROPOSAL WRITERS A BOOST
Citing evidence gives credibility to your proposal

This Article has been reprinted from the Fall 2002 issue of The Key, which is a quarterly publication of the National Mental Health Self-Help Clearinghouse

Almost every week, the National Mental Health Consumers’ Self-Help Clearinghouse assists groups working on grant proposals by helping them find literature that confirms the value of peer support, advocacy, and consumer-run services.

Even if your ideas about peer support and advocacy came from personal experience, citing scholarly evidence that backs up your ideas gives credibility to your proposal in the eyes of funders.

Some Clearinghouse clients are unfamiliar with supporting research and will seek our help with background reading before they begin work on a proposal. The Clearinghouse library cannot replace a college research library with a staff of professional librarians, but it can provide a head start. The Clearinghouse can also function as a literature memory bank, which is helpful since most people do not keep a list of every article they have read — especially while browsing Web sites and reading email. For example, many Clearinghouse clients have read at least parts of “Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General” or the Center for Mental Health Services publication “Consumer-Operated Services: A Technical Report,” but the Clearinghouse provides reminders that these resources are excellent references to cite in a grant proposal.

We find out what concept a client is trying to substantiate; then we suggest studies that may be helpful. Copyright law prohibits our dissemination of many of the studies themselves, but we are able to direct people to useful research that is available online. To obtain the actual studies only described in these online resources, take the descriptions to a local university library and ask a reference librarian for help locating them.

Finally, for those of you approaching a deadline and adding citations to your grant proposal at the last minute, information from these abstracts may be enough for your purposes without a trip to the library. Call the Clearinghouse for more details about using these studies to enhance your grant proposals: 1-800-553-4539. For the cost of postage, we can also send you some additional supporting literature that we have in our library.

The following is a partial list of online information about the value and efficacy of peer support, self-help, and empowerment. • “Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General” endorses peer support and consumer advocacy:

•  http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/mentalhealth/home.html. The following section of the report is specifically on self-help and consumer advocacy: http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/mentalhealth/chapter4/sec6.html#consumer.  The following section lists all the references for the studies cited by the Surgeon General: http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/mentalhealth/chapter4/ref4.html 
• Mark S. Salzer, Ph.D., of the University of Pennsylvania makes a case for consumer-operated services as an evidence-based practice: http://www.bhrm.org/guidelines/salzer.pdf.  The context of the pdf document, for citation purposes, is: http://www.bhrm.org/guidelines/mhguidelines.htm   
• The American Self-Help Clearinghouse compiled a summary of various peer support studies: http://mentalhelp.net/selfhelp/selfhelp.php?id=864  
• Elaina M. Kyrouz and Keith Humphreys compiled a list of abstracts of articles describing the effectiveness of self help: http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php/type/doc/id/993    
• National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy president Pat Risser’s Web site lists some peer support studies: http://home.att.net/~PatRisser/helpingclients/PeerSupportStudies.html
• The following is a comprehensive, annotated bibliography on self-help and peer support published by the Missouri Institute of Mental Health Program in Consumer Studies and Training: http://mimh200.mimh.edu/PieDb/01599.htm
• The National Research and Training Center of the University of Illinois at Chicago convened a workgroup that developed the following bibliography, which has abstracts of articles and reports that support the value of self-determination and empowerment: http://www.psych.uic.edu/UICNRTC/uicnrtc-sdbib.pdf.
• The following paper gives information about and citations for the series of peer support/mutual aid studies conducted by Julian Rappaport and colleagues: http://www.communitybuilders.nsw.gov.au/download/mutual.doc.
• The following bibliography from St. Ambrose University has abstracts of scholarly articles that support the value of empowerment: http://www.scs.unt.edu/classes/CSAG/4450/toolbox.pdf
• The National Resource Center on Homelessness and Mental Illness compiled a bibliography with abstracts on consumer involvement in service provision: http://www.nrchmi.com/pdfs/bibliographies/ConsumerInvolve.pdf.
• Information about the COSP study led by Jean Campbell, Ph.D., is available at http://www.cstprogram.org/.  Keep checking the Web site for new developments in this important project.