title: Self-help groups.
abstract: The 1970's have been described as the self-help decade. This paper has shown how the groups explicitly focus on certain specific but simple technical problems while implicity addressing a whole range of everyday problems of living. Self-help groups attempt to solve these technical and social problems by a process based on shared experience in a context of mutual understanding. An essential ingredient of the self-help solution is to do things together, while social activities with members outside the group meetings sustain the self-help method and give new meaning to a member's life and to his conception of his place in the world.
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D004739:England; D006126:Group Processes; D006127:Group Structure; D006801:Humans; D011340:Problem Solving; D012657:Self-Help Groups; D012940:Social Problems