At Guild, we strive to educate each client who comes through our doors on how best to advocate for themselves and take charge of their mental health. We do this through person-centered care that recognizes that clients are people first, and that their illness does not define them.
Our Intensive Residential Treatment Services (IRTS) program employs a talented and dedicated team of clinical staff — supervisors, program managers, mental health practitioners, and more — who give clients the treatment, coping skills, and resources they need on their journey to self-sufficiency.
But there’s one staff position within the IRTS program that’s especially unique. Our peer support specialists share a lived experience with mental illness with our clients, and they use their own stories of recovery to help inspire our clients and give them hope that recovery is possible, and that the client is not alone in their challenges.
Danny Evans is a peer support specialist at our Crisis and Recovery Center, located in Savage, MN. Before joining Guild, he worked at two different substance use treatment centers, and he was drawn to Guild out of a desire for a role at an organization that “focused more on mental health first.” Danny himself has lived with mental illness since the first grade, and his diagnosis led him to ultimately pursue a career that allows him to give back to the mental health community.
Guild’s peer support specialists play a pivotal role in ensuring our clients get the kind of care and compassion they deserve from someone who has been in their same shoes. Here, Danny walks you through a day in his role at Guild from his own perspective.
My work begins when a new client is admitted to the Crisis and Recovery Center. The young man lives with bipolar disorder, and he’s afraid and hesitant about working a 90-day residential treatment program like IRTS due to the stigma and discrimination he has received in the past from loved ones and other support networks — people who wanted to help him but didn’t understand how, because they couldn’t relate to his experience living with mental illness.
The client shares his concerns with me, and how he doesn’t know of anyone who is going through or has gone through anything like what he’s been dealing with. He’s gotten plenty of clinical advice from both his therapist and psychiatrist on how to successfully manage his bipolar disorder, but he’s looking for someone who can personally relate to his story of living with mental illness and trying to get into a recovery program.
I don’t have a professional medical background, so I can’t give the client any sort of clinical advice the way a doctor would. But I do share his lived experience, because I also live with bipolar disorder. I’ve been living with it since the first grade.
I sit down with the client and introduce myself before sharing my diagnosis with him. The young man listens, and I watch as his shoulders drop and his jaw begins to unclench. I can feel some of the client’s tension dissipate. I tell him there is hope for recovery and management of his bipolar disorder, and the client agrees to start 90 days in Guild’s IRTS program.
I’ve been working in recovery settings since 2017. I also have a creative side, in which I write spoken word rap poetry that I call Gift Rap Poetry. After pursuing and graduating with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing in 2012 from Metro State University in St. Paul, I continued to focus on my love of writing poetry about mental health awareness, and I began to tell my story of recovery. I researched the peer support specialist position and joined the Guild team in Scott County in August 2022.
I work as a peer support specialist because this job allows me to give back to the mental health community. I love sharing my story with clients while listening to them share their own struggles and victories as they work the IRTS program. I also use and share my Gift Rap Poetry to enhance my 1:1 sessions with my clients and add more substance to the support groups that I help lead.
We’re grateful to our peer support specialists like Danny for their willingness to share their personal stories living with mental illness. This compassion helps to destigmatize mental illness not just for our clients, but for the people in their lives who care about them and wish to better understand their experiences.