Using Behavioral Skills Training to Teach Peer Support Workers to Respond to Ethical Scenarios

ABSTRACT

Peer support workers are people living with a mental illness and/or substance use disorder who use their lived experience and training to support people in recovery. Setting boundaries when faced with an ethical scenario is an important skill that peer support workers must acquire. This report from the field examined the effects of group-based behavioral skills training (BST) to teach peer support workers to set boundaries by restating their needs, saying they cannot engage in the requested behavior, and redirecting them to an appropriate resource or response. Four of five participants met the mastery criterion after BST plus supplemental experimenter feedback. Moreover, participants found the training acceptable. These results suggest BST may be useful to teach ethical skills to peer support workers within the context of a public health workforce development program.

KEYWORDS:

• Behavioral skills training
• boundaries
• ethics training
• peer support

Acknowledgment

We would like to acknowledge Vicki Canteenwalla, Ruaa Hassaballa, Tyler Erath, David Jarmolowicz, and Jason Matejkowski for their important contributions to this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01608061.2023.2198740

Notes

1. Although teaching boundary discrimination was not an objective of this training, this time allowed for discussion of common behaviors in which peers can and cannot engage.