[The Professional Peer-Supporter: An Emerging Lever for Mental Health at Work]

Mental health in the workplace represents a growing challenge at the intersection of performance imperatives and well-being. Facing the limitations of traditional psychosocial risk prevention frameworks, the figure of the professional peer-supporter is emerging, grounded in the valuation of experiential knowledge as an intervention resource. By mobilizing their lived experience of distress or recovery, these hybrid actors support their colleagues, foster the recognition of lived experiences, and contribute to the cultural transformation of organizations. Drawing on French and Canadian contexts, this study highlights the potentialities and tensions inherent in this role: professionalization, institutional recognition, ethical issues, and the risks of instrumentalization. Thus, the professional peer-supporter appears as a strategic lever for social innovation, promoting a participatory and inclusive approach to mental health at work, yet requiring further empirical and ethical consolidation to be sustainably embedded in professional practices.