What Constitutes Self-Help in Mental Health and What Can Be Done to Improve It?

Abstract

The self-help (SH) movement in mental health (MH) is on the rise and its growth is necessary and inevitable. SH is an attempt by people with a mutual problem to take control over adverse circumstances in their lives. Formal SH efforts in general involve participation in organized groups for individuals with similar problems or in more differentiated and structured multi-service agencies. SH agencies include independent-living programs that help members to access material resources and gain practical skills, as well as drop-in community centers that provide a space for members to socialize, build a supportive community, and obtain advocacy and a gamut of independent-living services. SH agencies are distinguished from SH groups that work to help individuals gain control over or acceptance of their problems in that they are formal organizations providing services and often have a parallel focus on efforts directed toward changing social conditions. For example, some SH agencies are set up to assist poverty-stricken ex-patients and adopt the belief that members’ problems result from social and economic inequities; however, these agencies also take the position that members must be responsible for making changes in their own lives and for reforming social structures. On the other hand, agencies may also reject the victimhood mentality and adopt the position that some poverty-stricken ex-patients (primarily addicts, criminals, and the attitudinally challenged/those with poor work ethics) are in their undesirable situation due to the sum total of the decisions they have made in their lives.