I am a Certified Peer Support Specialist who leveraged on my lived experience of bipolar disorder, postnatal depression and anxiety disorder to offer peer recovery support. My aspiration is to be there for my peers and empower them on their road to recovery. I seek to offer hope, encouragement and guidance to peers and caregivers by giving engagement talks, facilitating peer support groups and providing peer support services. I am also an active mental health advocate who seeks to stamp out stigma in mental illnesses, so that more people who are suffering in silence will step forward to receive treatment. I believe that there is no shame to have a mental health condition, as it is just a physical disability like any common illness that can be treated.

My speedy recovery is proof that peer support truly works! To me, Resilience in Recovery requires three things:

1) Courage – to embrace the past

2) Gratitude – for the gifts of the present

3) Hope – to make the most of your future Recovery from mental illness is possible because I stand as the Evidence of Recovery myself! I believe that everyone can recover so long as we don’t give up hope!”

Please click on the following link for Deborah’s more detailed recovery story and video presentation: https://www.healthymindonline.com/blogs/detail/106