Relationship With Mental Health Professionals
A 1978 survey of mental health professionals in the United States found they had a relatively favorable opinion of self-help groups and there was a hospitable climate for integration and cooperation with self-help groups in the mental health delivery system. The role of self-help groups in instilling hope, facilitating coping, and improving the quality of life of their members is now widely accepted in many areas both inside and outside of the general medical community.
A survey of psychotherapists in Germany found that 50% of the respondents reported a high or very high acceptance of self-help groups and 43.2% rated their acceptance of self-help groups as moderate. Only 6.8% of respondents rated their acceptance of self-help groups as low or very low.
Surveys of self-help groups has shown very little evidence of antagonism towards mental health professionals. The maxim of self-help groups in the United States is "Doctors know better than we do how a sickness can be treated. We know better than doctors how sick people can be treated as humans."
Professional referrals to self-help groups for mental health are less effective than arranging for prospective self-help members to meet with veterans of the self-help group. This is true even when compared to referrals from professionals familiar with the self-help group when referring clients to it. Referrals mostly come from informal sources (e.g. family, friends, word of mouth, self). Those attending groups as a result of professional referrals account for only one fifth to one third of the population. One survey found 54% of members learned about their self-help group from the media, 40% learned about the their group from friends and relatives, and relatively few learned about them from professional referrals.
Read more about this topic: Self-help Groups For Mental Health
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