[Self-help group in health: solidarity partnership and request]

In the last decades, mutual self-help groups in health have become increasingly popular. The renewal of psychiatric care after the Second World War, the development of social psychiatry in the sixties, the emergence of a general social emancipatory movement, and the implementation of patients' rights, all these changes favored the diffusion of mutual self-help groups in developed countries. These groups have in general no hierarchical relationship between helpers and helped persons; group participation is free, their members share common experiences and attach great importance to experimental knowledge. These groups can have different member types: patients; health professionals; family members or significant others. As these groups are becoming well-known, they favor a new relationship between patient, medical and political authorities.