a light in dark places

We find that there is a fair amount of confusion around what exactly Mental Health Coaching is and is not, and how it relates to other modalities such as peer support, counseling, or even life coaching. We'll start by describing the other 3 modalities to provide a baseline to compare to and then dive into how Mental Health Coaching relates to each.

Peer Support- A Certified Peer Specialist is a person who has lived experience navigating their own recovery from mental health, addictions, and/or trauma, and has received specific training so that they can use those experiences to help others. A Certified Parent Peer Specialist whose lived experience consists of parenting a child with the challenges listed above. We have people on our team who have each of these certifications.

Counseling or Therapy- This service is provided by a person with a Master's degree who has passed a licensing exam and has 3000 hours (in Wisconsin) of supervised work. From this education and training, a therapist is qualified to do things that the other modalities cannot. Therapists typically use a backward-looking approach, meaning that they work with their clients to safely unpack past traumatic events so that they can reduce distress in the present moment. They also work to adjust thought patterns that are actively impacting someone in the present moment so that they will function better and experience less distress moving forward.

Life Coach- What is a coach? A coach is a person who gives you guidance to improve your performance in a certain aspect of your life. Life coaching is a relatively new field that is focused on the performance of an individual. This can take many forms and be applied to a variety of aspects of a person's life. Life coaching, while informed of the past, is present and future looking. As this field has evolved, we are increasingly seeing life coaching certifications with specific standards and methods.

Mental Health Coaching- A Mental Health Coach is a professional who has extensive training in mental health, addictions, and trauma-informed care, who helps a person to perform better in their lives as related to these issues. Their supports may cross any number of life domains: family, relationships, work/career, school, or even daily life activities, but the focus is on mental health. Mental health coaching is forward-looking and focused on skill building. While a Mental Health Coach is quite aware of their client's past and how it is affecting them now, their focus is on helping them to find recovery by performing better in the present and into the future.

Mental health coaching has aspects of all three of the above modalities and can overlap each of them in certain situations. However, these modalities are all unique unto themselves with certain lines that should not be crossed. Like Peer Specialists, most Mental Health Coaches bring their own lived experience to the work that they do. However, the focus of a Mental Health Coach is to teach the skills for the client to walk their own path of recovery, rather than using their personal story as a means of role modeling. Like a therapist, a Mental Health Coach has extensive training and education in mental health, and a good coach should do a lot of listening. They even use many of the same techniques. However, a therapist's training and education allows them to safely address material (i.e. past severe trauma) that a Mental Health Coach wouldn't be able to safely handle. While a therapist's role is to address the past and reduce distress in the present moment, a Mental Health Coach is focused on helping a person to find their strength and teach resilience and coping strategies so that they may flourish in the present and future. Lastly, like a Life Coach, a Mental Health Coach is future-focused and aims to build on strengths to help a person perform better. A Life Coach, however, is more externally focused, working on things like achievement, competition, leadership, standing out, and getting ahead. A Mental Health Coach, on the other hand, is very internally focused, helping the person to thrive internally so they can then manifest that internal strength in their external world.