Country South Australians who have struggled with mental health issues could be key to helping others through their own battles.
Support service Centacare is expanding a training program that calls for people with "lived experience" of mental health challenges to become peer support workers.
Trainer Em Temple-Heald said they wanted more country-based peer support workers to help address a skills shortage in regional mental health services.
"Sometimes people are being turned away from hospitals when they're experiencing significant mental health distress and there's not many places for people to turn to," Mx Temple-Heald said.
Mx Temple-Heald used to be a mental health peer support worker and said drawing on their experiences with mental health to help others was challenging but rewarding.
"It definitely does burden your heart," they said.
"On the other hand, there's so much joy and connection you can have in those roles and so much impact that you can have on other people that ultimately you wish you had when you struggled."
Centacare is specifically looking for people in and around Whyalla, Port Augusta, Port Pirie and Mount Gambier to take part in the training and start a career in mental health work.
What do these workers do?
A mental health peer support worker is someone who has either struggled with mental health issues or who has supported someone else, and draws on those experiences to help others in a healthcare setting.
In Whyalla, Uniting SA's Amye Morgan said the workers provided essential insights into mental health issues and how to deal with them.
"The benefit they provide is a personal understanding of what it's like to go through a mental health illness or a mental health admission, what it's like to be on a ward, what it's like to be on medication and how they've been able to recover," she said.
Uniting SA employs mental health support workers in Whyalla, who perform the same duties as the peer supporters, but do not have to draw on their personal experiences.
Ms Morgan said mental health support workers played a key role in helping people who had suffered from mental illness reintegrate into society.
"They can be quite isolated so even just getting them out for a coffee and getting them to experience things they couldn't on their own [is useful]," she said.
