UK - Scotland is rethinking mental health and lived experience is leading the way.

UK - Scotland is rethinking mental health and lived experience is leading the way. The Scottish Recovery Network has just published its 10-year strategic plan (2026–2036), setting out a bold vision for a recovery-focused mental health system powered by peer support and lived experience leadership. 🧠 Key priorities over the next decade 🔹 Growing a skilled peer support workforce embedded in communities across Scotland 🔹 Establishing paid lived experience leadership roles at every level of the system, from service design to policy and funding 🔹 Shifting the front door of mental health care from clinical settings to community-based, peer-led support 🔹 Building collaborative spaces where lived experience, practice and policy meet as equals 🧠 The vision for 2036? A mental health system built on relationships rather than diagnosis where people get the right support, at the right time, from people who truly understand. As one community voice put it: "It's time to stop asking peers to come in and share stories and then leave. We should be writing the strategies." This is exactly the kind of structural shift the sector has been calling for. Peer support is not an add-on. It is a foundation.