Support Groups

Support groups are generally nonprofessional groups where members provide one another with support and help on a shared, usually burdensome, problem or issue. The format of the groups often entails the sharing and evaluation of information, sometimes personal experiences, through the listening to one another and showing a sense of compassion and understanding on the issues relevant.

In terms of the differing forms of support groups, we can see the main types of both self-help support groups and professionally managed support groups. A self-help group is generally organized and managed solely by its members, who are generally volunteers with personal experience in the field of the support group, wishing to pass their experience on to help others with shared problems. These can also be referred to as peer support groups, fellowships and mutual help groups. Secondly, a professionally managed support group is one run by professionals who do not generally share the problems and burdensome issues that the members do. These professionals who run such groups are often trained as social workers or psychologists and they are the ones who lead discussions within the group. Professionally managed groups can often be found in public locations such as hospitals and may only be accessible to certain people.

In addition to traditional support groups, recent years have seen such groups appear on the internet, allowing the access of members to the group to be much wider than that of a physical attendance group. It is possible for members to chat both in real time and through the use of forum style websites, and these have proved to be invaluable to many members of such groups over the past twenty years or so.