Mental Health Seminar: Lean on Me - Everyday Connections for Mental Health

This was the second seminar in the Fall 2025 Mental Health Seminar series.

What role do friends, classmates, and peers play in mental health? More than you might think. Edwin Fisher, PhD, and Patrick Tang will share how peer support has been used around the world to strengthen mental health and wellbeing. From informal, everyday encouragement among friends to structured peer programs in schools, workplaces, and health care, Dr. Fisher and Mr. Tang will highlight the value of peer support and mutuality in promoting social, personal, mental, vocational, relational and other aspects of wellbeing. This session will explore practical strategies for supporting one another, along with population-level approaches that integrate peer support into communities and systems to enhance mutuality within them. Participants will leave with insights and tools for both giving and receiving peer support in ways that make a real difference.

Edwin Fisher, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, public health researcher and health behavior professor based at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. He brings decades of expertise in how social and peer support influences health outcomes, including as global director of Peers for Progress, a program that promotes peer support in health and mental health initiatives. A thought leader in his field, Dr. Fisher remains a strong advocate in scaling peer-led interventions in both clinical and community settings. 

Patrick Tang is a project director at the North Carolina Institute of Medicine. Before joining the team, he was a program manager at Peers for Progress in the Gillings School of Global Public Health. In that role, he led local, national, and international research projects and consulted on mutual and peer support interventions for health and well-being. Patrick earned his Master of Public Health in Health Behavior from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his Bachelor of Arts in Molecular Biology from Princeton University.

The Mental Health Seminar series is open to students, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, faculty, and staff. They create a space for learning, reflection, and discussion. The overall goal of the seminars is to empower all campus community members to help influence campus mental health and well-being.