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The SAMHSA Program to Advance Recovery Knowledge (SPARK) supports transformational, recovery-oriented change for every state, tribal, and territorial behavioral health system and promotes equitable access to recovery supports in the United States. This resource center includes current information focused on equitable recovery supports including recovery-oriented care, recovery supports and services, and recovery-oriented systems for people with mental health/substance use disorders and co-occurring disorders. If you have questions about these resources or suggestions for recovery resources to be added, please email the SPARK team. Learn more about SPARK and request training and technical assistance.
Report outlining the effects of Long COVID, cognitive and psychiatric symptoms associated with the condition, the widening of health disparity gaps, future directions for Long COVID recovery, methodological limitations of existing studies,
and goals for future research.
This new consumer guide offers people with past or current problematic substance use a straightforward exploration of the roles, values, and work environments of professional peer specialists. This guide is a comprehensive resource that will help readers understand who professional peer specialists are, what they do in various work settings, and how to access and pay for their services. Through visual aids illustrating the integration of peer specialists into the treatment and recovery landscape and practical forms readers can fill out, this consumer guide will help facilitate a strong start toward collaboration with a peer specialist.
SAMHSA collaborated with federal, state, tribal, territorial, and local partners including peer specialists to develop the National Model Standards for Peer Support Certification, inclusive of substance use, mental health, and family peer certifications. These National Model Standards closely align with the needs of the behavioral health (peer) workforce, and subsequently, the over-arching goal of the national mental health strategy.
SAMHSA recognizes that people with lived experience are fundamental to improving mental health and substance use services and should be meaningfully involved in the planning, delivery, administration, evaluation, and policy development of services and supports to improve our processes and outcomes.
This report provides behavioral health professionals, researchers, policymakers and other audiences with a comprehensive research overview and accurate information about effective and ineffective therapeutic practices related to youth of diverse sexual orientation and gender identity.
TIP 61 provides behavioral health professionals with practical guidance about Native American history, historical trauma, and critical cultural perspectives in their work with American Indian and Alaska Native clients.
Peer workers are emerging as important members of treatment teams. Help supervisors understand how to supervise peer workers in behavioral health services:
In 2015, SAMHSA led an effort to identify the critical knowledge, skills, and abilities leading to Core Competencies needed for peer workers in behavioral health services.