Self-help groups for former patients: Relations with mental health professionals

Abstract

Data from a national survey of 104 self-help groups for former mental patients were examined to assess actual and potential part-nerships between these groups and mental health professionals. The groups ’ level of interaction with andattitudes toward professionals varied with the structure, affiia-tion, and service model of the groups. The majority were mod-er-ate “supportive ” groups in which partnerships with professionals could occur but were problematic. Less common were radical “sep-aratist”groups, with which profes-sional partnerships were almost guaranteed to fail, and conserva-tive “partnership ” groups, with which partnerships were likely to succeed. Strong antipsychiatric at-titudes throughout the mental patient movement suggest that mental health professionals who approach former-patient groups with narrow clinical conceptions of mental illness are likely to fail in establishing partnerships. The growing partnership between self-help groups and the formal health care delivery system, recog-nized by health leaders such as former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop (1), suggests the importance of a broad, comparative understanding of the different types of self-help groups. Although self-help groups have been the subject ofmuch stud