The role of a health care professional in the evolution of a self-help group

Can health care professionals help motivate self-help groups and encourage them in their formative stages without endangering the self-help process? This paper describes the experience of the author with a group of women who wished to from a support group to share the lived experience of their mates' recovery from a myocardial infarction. It documents the evolution of the group and discusses the role of the health care professional as a group member. The stages of development of a self-help group suggested by Hill (1987) were useful in analyzing the group's evolution.