Exploring the benefits of self-help or mutual aid groups for the bereaved requires the prior examination of the bereaveds' social and psychological dilemmas and how these interact with the special characteristics of self-help groups (SHGs). This chapter addresses the following questions: What are SHGs? How do they work? What are the special problems of the bereaved? How do these interact with SHG processes to create a setting helpful to the bereaved? What is the empirical evidence that SHGs are useful in addressing problems of bereavement?

The designation self-help group is commonly applied to a wide variety of activities. SHGs are described as support systems, as social movements, as spiritual movements and secular religions, as systems of consumer participation, as alternative, care-giving systems adjunct to professional helping systems, as intentional communities, as supplementary communities, as expressive-social influence groups, and as organizations of the deviant and stigmatized (Killilea, 1976). Self-help, or mutual aid, groups are a poorly defined and unbounded area; arbitrary judgments rather than conceptual structure are the rule. In this chapter the working definition of SHG emphasizes (1) membership composition, people who share a common condition, situation, heritage, symptom, or experience; (2) self-governing and self-regulating; and (3) values, self-reliance and accessibility without charge.

SHGs are used extensively for a variety of problems. Mellinger and Baiter (1983) and Lieberman (1986), using a national probability sample of more than 3,000 households, reported on 1 year's utilization rate.