With-you - EP 41: Capital CEO Duncan Marshall on Recovery, Peer Support, and the Threat to Lived Experience-Led Mental Health Services

Shoulder-to-Shoulder is a collection of inspiring conversations about the positive impact of peer support.

Duncan Marshall Square

In this episode of Shoulder to Shoulder, Cate meets Duncan, CEO at CAPITAL in West Sussex, a long-standing, lived-experience-led organisation that has spent nearly 30 years championing peer support, shaping services, and ensuring people’s voices are heard.

Duncan brings his own lived experience to the work, having come through psychotic depression and support that, in his words, felt patronising and disconnected from what he actually needed. That experience helped shape a career spent trying to do things differently.

In this conversation, he reflects on the value of independent peer support, why lived experience-led organisations matter, and what happens when the services people rely on are suddenly pushed to the brink. With Capital facing devastating funding cuts, this episode becomes not just a conversation about peer support, but about what is lost when systems stop listening to the very people they claim to serve.

In this episode, we explore:

How lived experience shaped Duncan’s path into mental health work
Why independent peer support offers something different from statutory services
The role Capital has played in West Sussex for nearly three decades
What happens when lived experience-led organisations are pushed aside by commissioning decisions
Why peer support is so often valued by people in crisis, yet still treated as expendable
The real human cost of funding cuts on staff, services and recovery

^{* The Shoulder-to-Shoulder Podcast explores the impact of peer support and lived experience across different themes, places and spaces. They often describe powerful stories of personal growth, mental health and resilience which may contain descriptions of trauma and distress. We would encourage all listeners to trust their own instincts within their own personal experiences and prioritise their emotional safety during listening.}