ABSTRACT
One of the developments in Open Dialogue (OD) practice, as it has spread internationally, has been the inclusion of peer workers in network meetings, perhaps beginning in Germany, as a result of the foundation trainings organised by Volkmar Aderhold and others. Peer workers also featured strongly in the Parachute Project in New York City, where trainings in OD were offered to both peers and clinicians, alongside Intentional Peer Support trainings. In the Parachute Project the trainers set the expectation for peer workers, organising training such that they could co-facilitate network meetings. In the Parachute Project, clinicians came to value peer workers sharing their own experiences of altered states and of conventional treatment – the ways in which this helped to forge connections with and validate/clarify the experiences of service users and network members, especially in meetings when the peer worker spoke openly about their experience of psychosis.
