Talk:Support group
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is within the scope of the WikiProject on Alternative Medicine. Please visit the project page for more details, or ask questions on talk. |
| Start | This article has been rated as Start-class on the quality scale. |
 |
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Medicine. Please visit the project page for details or ask questions at the doctor's mess. |
| Start | This page has been rated as Start-Class on the quality assessment scale |
| Mid | This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance assessment scale |
[edit] merge encounter with support ?
Merge suggested since Encarta lists those terms as synonims. I don't know enough to be certain whether they ar the same or is Encarta not large enough to explain the difference. Encarta source. Also consider merging with self-help.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 03:24, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
No... Wow, Encarta has it poorly. There are pretty big differences: American Heritage says encounter groups are for increasing members' "sensitivity, responsiveness, and emotional expressiveness" by encouraging free expression & emotional response; whereas support groups are for, well, support. ;-) Nadirsofar 16:00, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
- Score one for us then. It would be good to explain the difference in both articles before removing the merge tag.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 01:09, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
-
- Each is what it is to a particular group, but generally and in proper relation to recognized literature, encounter groups are more confrontational, though they have evolved toward more gentle dialogue.[1] More recent encounter groups tend to be milder in their approach, but they are structured to elicit discovery of conflicting motivations, whereas support groups tend to encourage preferred goals and motivations. Support groups can be much wider in focus, such as divorce support groups or cancer support groups, whereas encounter groups tend to be primarily psychological or even psychoanalytic in focus. With these differences in mind, integrity of the concepts would best be preserved in seperate articles.ProveReader 08:09, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
No... The terms are distinct. Encounter groups were a faddish phenomenon that arose in the 1960s, along with a lot of what has now come to be termed New Age, and the actions of such groups can overlap with drama therapy. There is a definite coloration to this term. Support groups, on the other hand are always specialised to handle whatever type of mutual support is being sought. Just go to yahoogroups.com. The support group article as written here is much closer akin to the idea in the UK of self-help groups, which term I'm proposing to re-redirect to go to the support groups article. Matt Stan 21:17, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Another huge difference is that encounter groups focus solely on here and now feelings and relationships within the group (because those are most salient), while support groups focus on there and then behaviors and life outside of the group. Manicexpressive 08:45, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Merge tag removed... after 60 days with no support for merging, and good evidence they are unique concepts. Leastos 06:51, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
- ooh. gonna remove the tag on the encounter groups one too, then. Theconroy 09:15, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] reworking
I kept all of the thrust of the previous content, but I've tried to clean up the presentation and make the definitions a little clearer. If there are ideas I've inadvertently left out, can they be worked into this framework, if possible? More examples would be great, too. Nadirsofar 16:44, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
- I expanded further on Nadisofar's work, breaking out on-line support groups into a new section, with a reference to a scholarly publication on the phenomenon. I clarified the usual context of facilitated support groups. I omited the reference to a particular on-line facilitated group because the group named is one among thousands, but not typical of facilitated groups either on-line or in face-to-face settings. Unlike professionally facilitated groups associated with institutions, in that case, the faciliaton of the group was not a professional activity, per se, and the purpose of the group has vacilated between support and original research. That facilitator has cited in academic presentations the difficulty in sustaining such a group. Though the facilitator is a professional in a field related to the purpose of the group, his facilitation is not a paid activity, but rather a personal avocation outside his institutional affiliations. Given the scope of available groups, a reference to directories of groups would be more useful than a link to an atypical individual group.
- And, for those not familiar with the narrow distinctions, the concepts of encounter groups, group therapy and support groups do come from unique origins. They each tend to center around unique and sometimes mutually exclusive purposes and methods. And self-help is also a unique topic, though appropriately and neccessarily addressed in the context of support groups. Self-help may have been better defined as self-care in a (now defunct?) publication [2][3] but it extends beyond the limited role of self-help group interaction to include many other self-initiated therapeutic activities. ProveReader 05:21, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
-
- FYI: I intend to work on the online support groups section and hope to be able to find newer sources & research on the phenomenon. Preliminarily I've moved around and reworded some of the other sections.
- I've removed most (but not all) use of the term self-help, as the article with that title is a bit of a mess. --Hordaland (talk) 09:19, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
