Tending The Garden: What organic youth peer support can teach us about building systems that care
4 affiliations
- 1Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
- 2Department of Health Policy and Management, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, Los Angeles, California, United States of America.
- 3Youth MOVE National, United States of America.
- 4Independent, United States of America.
Abstract
Youth peer support (YPS) is an evidence-based model of care in which young people with lived experience (YPWLE) provide recovery-oriented support to peers navigating similar challenges. On many college campuses this work already happens informally, without training, compensation, or institutional recognition. This narrative essay examines The Garden, a unit of a student mentor-mentee program at the University of California, San Diego, that organically evolved into de facto YPS, providing students mutual aid spanning acute crisis, identity formation, and navigation of the hidden curriculum of higher education. Drawing on first-person accounts, we show that The Garden often operated in place of institutional mental health and advising systems, providing immediate, person-centered support grounded in shared lived experience and human rights. A competency mapping across these accounts demonstrates that The Garden consistently reflected practices the YPS literature identifies as central and effective. We argue that higher education largely lacks both the infrastructure and the institutional power reflexivity to recognize, train, and sustain this labor, manufacturing an invisible and inequitable burden for students. We call on higher education institutions to meaningfully invest in YPS infrastructure, centering youth leadership and community ownership. When institutions seek to scale YPS without ceding power they risk co-optation, stripping student spaces of the autonomy and trust that make them effective and accessible. Drawing on youth participation scholarship, we distinguish recognition from control and propose recommendations across policy, funding, programming, campus climate, and research to build YPS infrastructure that reflects students’ lived realities.
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BibTeX
@article{lara2026tending,
title = {{Tending The Garden: What organic youth peer support can teach us about building systems that care}},
author = {Ernesto Isaac Lara and Rhianen Callahan and Leana Cortez and Kharylle Rosario and Anna Zick and Rocio Sanchez and Aishwarya Mitra and Megha Datta and Gabriella Imai},
journal = {PLOS Mental Health},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1371/journal.pmen.0000678},
url = {https://journals.plos.org/mentalhealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmen.0000678},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Tending The Garden: What organic youth peer support can teach us about building systems that care
AU - Ernesto Isaac Lara
AU - Rhianen Callahan
AU - Leana Cortez
AU - Kharylle Rosario
AU - Anna Zick
AU - Rocio Sanchez
AU - Aishwarya Mitra
AU - Megha Datta
AU - Gabriella Imai
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/21
JO - PLOS Mental Health
DO - 10.1371/journal.pmen.0000678
UR - https://journals.plos.org/mentalhealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmen.0000678
AB - Youth peer support (YPS) is an evidence-based model of care in which young people with lived experience (YPWLE) provide recovery-oriented support to peers navigating similar challenges. On many college campuses this work already happens informally, without training, compensation, or institutional recognition. This narrative essay examines The Garden, a unit of a student mentor-mentee program at the University of California, San Diego, that organically evolved into de facto YPS, providing students mutual aid spanning acute crisis, identity formation, and navigation of the hidden curriculum of higher education. Drawing on first-person accounts, we show that The Garden often operated in place of institutional mental health and advising systems, providing immediate, person-centered support grounded in shared lived experience and human rights. A competency mapping across these accounts demonstrates that The Garden consistently reflected practices the YPS literature identifies as central and effective. We argue that higher education largely lacks both the infrastructure and the institutional power reflexivity to recognize, train, and sustain this labor, manufacturing an invisible and inequitable burden for students. We call on higher education institutions to meaningfully invest in YPS infrastructure, centering youth leadership and community ownership. When institutions seek to scale YPS without ceding power they risk co-optation, stripping student spaces of the autonomy and trust that make them effective and accessible. Drawing on youth participation scholarship, we distinguish recognition from control and propose recommendations across policy, funding, programming, campus climate, and research to build YPS infrastructure that reflects students’ lived realities.
SN - 2837-8156
ER -