She provides practical advice and direction to professionals for working with these groups while analyzing self-help/support organizations on three different levels - in terms of the groups themselves, the groups' members, and the practitioner's interaction with the groups. In addition, this comprehensive volume discusses the most prominent representative associations as examples of different types of groups, including Alcoholics Anonymous, Recovery, Inc., National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, and the Alzheimer's Association. It also examines the rise of telephone and on-line self-help, considering the advantages, and disadvantages of this style of group interaction.

There were more visits to peer support/self-help groups last year, than there were visits to the offices of mental health professionals. Peer support groups have exploded in popularity, as the public and the healthcare community recognize that they provide an effective complement to formal care, and improve the chance that many participants will have better healthcare outcomes. Few peer support/self-help group leaders have more than minimal training in how to lead a group successfully. This is unfortunate, as leading a self-help group is often challenging. This pocket resource is designed to provide easy access to key information and strategies to help Peer Specialists and other lay group leaders develop and expand their group facilitation skills so they can lead healthy thriving peer support groups.

Volume numbers determined from Scope of the guidelines, p. 12-13.

This work is based upon a research study whose purpose was to collect new information about the special benefits and drawbacks of formal organizations' efforts at social network building for older women. In it, a two-tiered investigation was carried out: a national review of a select group of model self-help support programmes for older women throughout the United States; and an in-depth community case study of a nationally recognized model program of self-help support groups, leadership training, networking and community outreach/education for older women. It provides the research-oriented reader with scientific evidence to assess the relative efficacy of self-help group programming.

Previously published under title: Authoritative guide to self-help resources in mental health.

Support Groups: Current Perspectives on Theory and Practice provides a framework for understanding and examining supportive group interventions. It provides descriptions of different kinds of support groups and alerts practitioners and educators to the factors they should consider in planning, implementing, and evaluating support group services. The book also offers guidance in using innovative approaches to providing support services through computer groups and telephone groups.Human service professionals and social work educators, practitioners, and students will find these topics covered in Support Groups: evaluation of support groups a support group model guidelines for support group practice innovative use of support groups issues in support group practiceThe purpose of this book is to examine state-of-the-art support group practice. Support groups are conceived as the center of a continuum of supportive group interventions, overlapping with self-help groups at one end and treatment groups at the other. The chapters are placed within the context of the open systems model developed by the editors. This model provides a framework for understanding factors that affect support groups, for guiding intervention, and for evaluating their outcomes.

Social science research on self-help/mutual aid groups and organizations from 1960 on is reviewed. Voluntary peer-run mutually supportive groups’ diversity illustrated through Alcoholics Anonymous, mental health groups and others. Socio-political contexts shape self-help/mutual aid. Borkman’s autoethnographic narrative highlights her participation.