Self‐help Movements

Abstract

Self‐help groups are a distinctive feature of social life in the United States and elsewhere that emerged on the scale of a social movement during the last four decades of the twentieth century. The term “self‐help” applies to a wide variety of groups in which members offer each other social support, seek personal changes, and, in some cases, seek to challenge existing institutions that are not meeting their needs. Self‐help groups can generally be characterized as “lay” rather than “professional” in that they propose new practices to address shortcomings and discontent with traditional (institutionalized) means of dealing with a variety of physical and mental problems from which individuals suffer. The proposed strategies include the promotion of personal, individual growth and, in some cases, the betterment or improvement of the health or wellbeing of an entire affected group. The rapid expansion of self‐help in the 1960s and 1970s coincides with larger human rights movements of the time (the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the women's health movement). “Self‐help” continues to evolve in the twenty‐first century, albeit in new forms and with different emphases.