Guide to Mental Health Self-Help Support Group Experience Essay

Guide to Mental Health Self-Help Support Group Experience - Essay Example They touch the family, friends, and caregivers as well. How the symptoms are managed depends on a great degree on the amount of information provided by the mental health professional. In addition, the cultural perspective will often dictate the level of shame and stigma that must be overcome and how treatment will be provided. The medical model seeks to reinforce the importance of lifelong abstinence by encouraging the patient to attend counseling and twelve step groups. These support groups are frequently used as adjunctive interventions and are philosophically interwoven into many social and medical model treatment programs. Alcoholic Anonymous (AA) was founded in the 1930s by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, two alcoholics who discovered that they could maintain their sobriety by helping other alcoholics. AA is often referred to as the most effective and widely utilized treatment for addictions (Royce, 1981) and this is the primary reason why our group chose this mental health support group. Aside from this, it is now an international self-help fellowship which offers support to all people who want to quit drinking. Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous and other anonymous support groups are structured on the AA model and utilizes its â€Å"Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions† as the basis of their recovery program. The fellowship and principles offered at meetings encourage individuals to remain sober by taking life â€Å"one day at a time† and to work toward spiritual development and character change. Alcoholics Anonymous currently has more than one million members in the United States with 52,000 groups while they have almost 100,000 members in Canada with 45,000 groups. They also have members outside US and Canada averaging 730,000 distributed in more than 45,000 groups. They have a total of 2,082,980 members and 105,294 groups in their organization including the loners and members in