Notes that today, a gynecological self help group tries to make easily understood information about womens' bodies, bodily processes, and related health care available to all women. (Author/AM)

Notes that one of the most significant characteristics of mutual aid groups is the fact that they are empowering and thus delineating. They enable members to feel and use their strengths, their own power, to have control over their own lives. (Author/AM)

Rap Room is a peer counseling service which combines self-help, peer help, and professional guidance to develop supportive relations in the midst of a generally depersonalizing and growth-stifling institution. (Author/AM)

Discusses the following: 1. Why self care is of such great interest today; 2. What initiatives have been taken thus far; 3. Issues related to self-care that have aroused considerable interest, and, 4. Research needs in self-care. (Author/AM)

Argues that small-group mutual aid organizations are successful voluntary associations that attract members even in our individualistic and commodity-driven culture because they provide valuable collective benefits that can only be enjoyed in common. Small groups as a source of social capital have implications for the study of helping…

Discusses what feminists have been trying to accomplish through the many womens programs that have sprouted, flourished, and sometimes faded in recent years and focuses on Women in Transition, Inc., a program that failed. (Author/AM)

This field work examines womens' participation in 50 alternative self-help support systems covering 10 states and notes that variety is the outstanding characteristic of these services. (Author/AM)

Suggests that the single most important common denominator of the various types of self-help groups examined may be that the role of the person who has already lived through the experience is critical for helping others. (Author/AM)

Suggests a taxonomy of the grass roots movement and gives a general descriptive over view of the 60 groups studied with respect to origin, constituency, size, funding, issues, and ideology. (Author/AM)

Reports on the Center for Independent Living (CIL) in Berkeley, California, one of the most remarkable and probably the largest self-help enterprise of disabled people to have surfaced in the past 25 years. (Author/AM)

Explores the concepts of support systems and self help and presents a paradigm for relating the two. (Author)

Outlines data on the socioeconomic, health, and educational status of Blacks in Georgia. Calls for the maximization of internal resources for internal development, self-sufficiency, and self-determination. (GC)

Suggests that one of the reasons why many of the older self-help organizations rejected professional help may be that the help that was offered was of the more authoritarian variety. (Author/AM)

Outlines the evaluation of a suburban hotline. Among its foci is the interrelationship between the growth and development of a core group of youthful phone aides and that of the organization as a whole. (Author/AM)

Suggests that no issue on the domestic scene has greater importance for women than full employment because the potential gains for women are immense when the economy moves into high gear and there are jobs enough for all who are willing able and seeking work. (Author/AM)