Nursing is a profession built on care, and is one that often asks people to carry enormous emotional, ethical, and relational weight. For nurses navigating recovery from substance use disorder, that weight can be compounded by stigma, fear, and isolation.
When people work in recovery, peer support, and community care, they often spend their days holding space for others. But where do they go to pause, reflect, and be supported?
Recently, staff from Choice Recovery Coaching from Greenfield, MA came together for a focus group to share their experiences with GPS training and GPS support groups. What emerged was a powerful picture of connection, safety, and healing, not just for individuals in recovery, but for the people who support recovery every day.
Community health centers that serve Chinese and other immigrant communities sit at a powerful intersection of cultural identity, stigma, and care. The staff who work in these settings, like medical assistants, social workers, behavioral health clinicians, financial services staff, and others, are often members of the very communities they serve. They carry both the emotional weight of their roles and the cultural meanings attached to mental health, stress, and vulnerability.
Across the country, healthcare is straining under the weight of demand it simply cannot meet. No amount of individual appointments can address the scale of loneliness, chronic disease, behavioral health needs, and workforce burnout that continues to grow. Yet right in front of us is a solution that is both ancient and innovative: bringing people together in groups.
Healthcare workers are showing up to work every day in environments where violence has become an expected part of the job. In many hospitals, especially safety-net settings, assaults and threats happen so frequently that staff barely have time to process one incident before the next occurs. Nurses, CNAs, PCTs, techs, and others carry these experiences quietly while trying to continue giving skilled and compassionate care.
Across Massachusetts, hospital leaders are trying to solve a crisis that becomes more visible—and more painful—every month: Healthcare workers are carrying more than any human being should. The system is stretched thin, the workforce is exhausted, and the burden on clinicians has reached a point where survival often feels like the highest attainable goal.
In every healthcare setting, time is the tightest currency. Staff move from crisis to crisis, schedules overflow, and anything that isn’t urgent is pushed aside. In that reality, support groups, no matter how meaningful, can easily be dismissed as “nice to have” rather than essential.
When I first encountered the GPS Group Peer Support model, I recognized something deeply familiar: a reflection of the way many faith communities already walk alongside one another in prayer, compassion, and hope. Yet GPS also gave me the language, structure, and grounding to what I had long felt in my spirit— healing happens when we make space for honest conversation, shared humanity, and the divine presence that meets us there.
For years, our mental health system has been unable to meet the needs of the people who rely on it most. This was true before COVID, it worsened during the pandemic, and the current climate has pushed things to a breaking point. Too many individuals cannot access care because they cannot afford it, it is not offered in their language, it does not exist in their community, or their insurance will not cover it. Others have been harmed or dismissed within the healthcare system and no longer trust it enough to seek support. The result is an enormous and widening gap.
When community health worker Andrins Renaudin sits down with Haitian parents in shelters, churches, schools, or living rooms, she often begins by naming the quiet truth everyone already knows: talking about mental health is hard. As she explains, “Mental health… is a very scary topic for many.”
