More Than an Hour: How Peer Support is Building Community, Connection, and Hope for Veterans
As we recognize Mental Health Awareness Month, it is important to acknowledge a reality facing many veterans and service members today: the need for support continues to outpace the systems designed to provide it.
Nearly 41% of post-9/11 veterans report experiencing mental health challenges, yet fewer than half receive treatment. At the same time, the behavioral health workforce is under increasing strain. In 2025, the Department of Veterans Affairs reported a 50% increase in severe staffing shortages, with 57% of VA facilities experiencing critical psychologist shortages. Federal behavioral health funding is also contracting, including $1.7 million in recent cuts to SAMHSA mental health grants.
The result is a growing gap between need and access.
But this gap is bigger than clinical care alone.
Many veterans are not simply waiting for an appointment. They are navigating isolation, loss of community, transitions to civilian life, geographic barriers, stigma, and the challenge of finding someone who truly understands their experiences. Even when treatment is available, many individuals need support long before they reach a therapist’s office.
That is where peer support plays a critical role.
Peer support does not replace clinical care. It complements it. It provides immediate connection, shared understanding, and a pathway toward additional support when needed. It creates spaces where individuals can be seen, heard, and understood by people who have walked similar paths.
In the last 12 months alone, Give an Hour received 616 inquiries for peer support services from all 50 states, demonstrating both the national need for connection-based support and the growing recognition that healing often begins with community.
Through our Peer Support Model, veterans and service members can connect immediately with trained peer facilitators and fellow community members who share lived experience. These groups do not replace clinical care. Instead, they serve as a critical bridge, offering connection, belonging, understanding, and support while helping individuals access additional resources when needed.
For Military and Veteran Peer Support Facilitator Rebekah Edmondson, that bridge has become one of the most meaningful parts of her own journey.
Finding Purpose Through Service
Edmondson’s connection to Give an Hour began through her work supporting Afghan refugees, particularly women she had personally worked alongside during her deployment to Afghanistan.
What stood out to her wasn’t simply the mission. It was the organization’s willingness to show up.
“It just spoke volumes to me,” Edmondson recalls. “The willingness to really be on the ground with the population of individuals you’re looking to support, and to engage with them directly, face-to-face, and ask what kind of support would be meaningful to them.”
That experience inspired her to deepen her involvement with Give an Hour while pursuing her master’s degree in social work. During her internship, she helped develop peer support curriculum and delivered training to active-duty soldiers at Fort Bliss.
The experience reinforced something she already knew from her own military background: people need spaces where they can be honest about what they’re carrying. Eventually, she requested to become a peer support facilitator for the military and veteran community.
Meeting a Need That Kept Growing
In the beginning, Give an Hour’s military and veteran peer support meetings were held just twice a month. It quickly became clear that wasn’t enough. Participants kept returning. They asked for more opportunities to connect. They didn’t want to wait weeks between meetings.
“We had people saying, ‘Man, we have to go too long between meetings,'” Edmondson says. “So leadership said, let’s experiment.”
The groups expanded from twice monthly to weekly. Attendance continued to grow. Soon, sessions regularly attracted nearly twenty participants. Today, Give an Hour hosts multiple military and veteran peer support opportunities each week, including dedicated groups for women veterans.
“It’s just so inspiring to see it grow,” Edmondson says.
The growth itself tells an important story. People come because they find value. They return because they find connection.
The Power of “Come As You Are”
One of the most remarkable aspects of Give an Hour’s peer support model is its simplicity. There is no pressure to perform. No expectation to have the right words. No requirement to share before you’re ready.
“The agenda is not having an agenda,” Edmondson explains. “People feel very comfortable and things are just natural and free-flowing.”
Participants can talk. They can listen. They can simply show up for one another.
Over time, people just showing up creates something deeper than a support group. It creates community.
“I feel it is almost more like a reunion,” Edmondson says. “A virtual reunion of friends. When someone doesn’t show up, they remember, they check in with each other.”
And for many veterans who have struggled with isolation after military service, that matters more than people realize.
“Veterans really do tend to isolate and feel kind of like an outsider in their own communities,” Edmondson says. “This is a space where they can show up, be totally themselves, and be celebrated for all their quirkiness.”
When Peer Support Becomes Peer Leadership
One of the most powerful outcomes of Give an Hour’s peer support model is that participants don’t remain passive recipients of support. They become supporters themselves. Edmondson remembers one participant who began keeping a journal during meetings.
Whenever someone new joined the group, he would write down their name, the date they first attended, and details from their story.
Weeks later, if that person returned, he would follow up.
“He would say, ‘Hey John, we haven’t seen you in a couple weeks. When you first came on this date, you said this, and I wanted to follow up with you about it.'”
For Edmondson, that moment captured the true impact of peer support.
“I was really overjoyed to see how meaningful it was for him to have this social outlet that he was so clearly desperate for.”
Bridging the Gap Between Isolation and Care
Mental health support exists on a continuum. Some individuals need immediate clinical intervention.
Others simply need someone to talk to today. That’s where peer support can play a transformative role.
When Edmondson first became a facilitator, she worried she might encounter situations beyond her ability to manage. Instead, she discovered something important.
The groups themselves became part of the support system.
“Oftentimes, I don’t even have to be the one to ask somebody if they’re okay,” she explains. “People have found that confidence organically on their own.”
At the same time, Give an Hour’s clinical infrastructure provides an important safety net when higher levels of support are needed. Peer facilitators are never alone. They operate within a broader ecosystem designed to help individuals access additional care and resources when appropriate. This combination of lived experience and clinical support is what makes the model so effective. Dr. Shawn Silverstein, Peer Facilitator Supervisor for GAH, Licensed Clinical Psychologist and Suicidologist notes, “Lived experience is the credential. I see our peer support facilitators as colleagues and critical partners in achieving goals of improving people’s quality of life
Witnessing Transformation
Over the years, Edmondson has witnessed countless examples of growth and healing. One story remains particularly meaningful. A veteran from Wyoming joined the group struggling significantly. She appeared withdrawn, tearful, and guarded.
Months later, the group watched something remarkable unfold. One evening she joined from the premiere of a film about veterans in which she had been featured. She proudly showed the group around the event. The difference was unmistakable.
“To see her go from almost looking on death’s door to this vibrant, full-of-life, happy, proud person, we all just felt so happy for her.”
The Medicine Is Belonging
When asked what participants say these groups mean to them, Edmondson doesn’t hesitate.
“The first word that comes to mind is family.” Many sessions run long because no one wants to leave.
Participants joke that Give an Hour should really be called “Give an Hour and a Half.” And when the meetings finally end?
People linger.
They tell one another they love each other. They make plans to return. They remind one another that they matter. For Edmondson, those moments reveal the true power of peer support.
“To be able to show up in a space and give and receive love, for somebody that’s isolated and feeling alone and misunderstood, that’s the medicine.”
A voice among many
As Give an Hour marks two decades of impact, Rebekah Edmondson’s story stands alongside others in a powerful collective narrative. She is featured as one of Give an Hour’s twenty voices in the organization’s 20th anniversary edition of the annual report. A recognition not just of her work, but of the community she has helped build.
A community where people come as they are.
And, over time, come back to life.
Because awareness is a starting point.
Being heard is what changes things.
Stories like this don’t stand alone. They’re part of a larger movement toward more integrated, human-centered care.
Explore Twenty Years, Twenty Voices to see how this work is taking shape across communities. silence no longer serves you.
Visit GiveAnHour.org for more information & sign up for our newsletter at GiveAnHour.org/Newsletter. To sign up for Peer Support Groups, visit GiveAnHour.Org/ContactUs.
Stay in touch with Give an Hour:
https://www.facebook.com/GiveanHour/
https://www.instagram.com/giveanhour/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/giveanhour
