In what ways can peer mentors be helpful after a spinal cord injury? - Heather Taylor, PhD

Peer support can be extremely helpful. I think as a person with a spinal cord injury being able to reach out to someone else who’s been there and knows what it’s like, who’s a little bit further in their rehab than you are, and can say, “Yes, this is what I’ve done. Yes, this is normal. That’s how I felt, I was angry. I tried this service, I tried this therapy.” It’s huge; I highly recommend reaching out to multiple others, if you will, other individuals with spinal cord injury. You may have someone whose like, “Well this is my rehab partner, they’ll tell me what I need to know about the rehab,” or “this is my physician advocate partner, and they’ll tell me how to ask my questions and get what I need done. And then I’ll have those who are my emotional partner, who will share with me my frustrations about going through this, and my anger, and get my irritation with barriers in the community and everything like that.” So having multiple individuals—it doesn’t have to be just one—there’re people that meet different needs.