In a support group, members provide each other with various types of help, usually nonprofessional and nonmaterial, for a particular shared, usually burdensome, characteristic. The help may take the form of providing and evaluating relevant information, relating personal experiences, listening to and accepting others' experiences, providing sympathetic understanding and establishing social networks. A support group may also work to inform the public or engage in advocacy.
Read more about Support Group: History, Maintaining Contact, Management By Peers or Professionals, Types of Support Groups, Online Support Groups, Support Groups in Popular Media
Famous quotes containing the words support and/or group:
“There is a period near the beginning of every mans life when he has little to cling to except his unmanageable dream, little to support him except good health, and nowhere to go but all over the place.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“...Womens Studies can amount simply to compensatory history; too often they fail to challenge the intellectual and political structures that must be challenged if women as a group are ever to come into collective, nonexclusionary freedom.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)