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)

Describes a workshop providing tools for self-confrontation and for acquiring self-help methods of making the desired changes in participants' daily lives. Many participants came to the realization that they are not passive victims of life, that they do make choices, and that they shape their lives by those choices. (Author/BEF)

Reports on a training package that taught four consumers with physical, learning, or psychiatric disabilities how to write advocacy letters. The research design included baseline and training, and posttraining conditions. Results suggest that an action letter training program may enhance advocacy letter writing skills to address specific problems.…

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)