[Implication of the self-help mechanism in the geriatric club (author's transl)]

In the paper clinical investigations are given of the implication of the self-help mechanism with the 125 members of the Geriatric club of the Clinical hospital "Dr. Mladen Stojanović" in Zagreb during the year 1979. The results show that in this phase of the development of contemporary society and medicine and prevention geriatrics self-help is the only way of care and responsibility for the health of a great number of the population. Self-help is built-in everyday life and activity of the members of the club. Elder persons take part in the permanent care of their own health through the group mechanism of self-help by helping and caring for themselves on te basis of obtained health informations, knowledge and experience with society and public health services. In time they discover factors of risk which in many cases provoke a number of chronic illness and thereby put health in danger. The perspectives of self-help are in the scientific work of various social structures and in finding out specific methods of individual and group self-help for attacking mass chronic sicknesses of contemporary civilisation.