Project LETS is an inclusive community for individuals with mental illness that provides peer support services, assists with self-advocacy, and strives for political change. Through our Peer Mental Health Advocate (PMHA) program, we train college students with mental illness to help other students with mental illness. These peer-to-peer relationships help both the mentor and the mentee to deconstruct internalized stigma, which mutually benefits both partners. We approach our work through the framework of intersectional feminism, and aim to break down barriers to quality mental health care by addressing issues of stigma and institutional ableism. While we are currently prioritizing the expansion of our PMHA program on college campuses, our ultimate goal is to facilitate peer support services within a variety of communities.

Project LETS was founded in 2013, after the suicide of my friend, Brittany Marie Petrocca, as a freshman in high school.

In this work, I come from the perspective of an individual with lived experience (psychiatric/physical disability, sexual assault survivor, suicide attempt survivor) and our team began filling a unique niche between clinical medicine and organizations focusing strictly on awareness. Neither extreme was providing community-based, socially and culturally relevant support for young adults with mental illness, and this is where we've found our home.

I am personally driven by the incredible response to our programs, the need we see portrayed daily, all over the world, and the number of individuals that are lost too soon, left out of opportunities, or failed by a societal response to a disorder (i.e. mass incarceration).

The medical model of disability does not provide individuals with many resources, skills, or opportunities to become empowered; so we focus on relationship building and peer support. This work is as much for my own justice and survival as it is for those that we work with and serve. Peer support has kept me alive, and I am eager to spread our curricula and work to those in need of a lifeline.

Teammate: Molly Hawes