Starting a support group

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HealthWiki > Promoting Community Mental Health > Chapter 8: Support groups > Starting a support group

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In this chapter:

 

In this chapter:

• Chapter 8: Support groups
• Support groups help in many ways
• Starting a support group
• Running support group meetings
• Not all support groups look the same

Anyone can start a support group. It just takes a few people who can meet regularly and have something in common. People may get together because they share the same challenges or have similar experiences, or because they live in the same neighborhood, have children at the same school, worship at the same church, or work at the same job. Sometimes a health worker or teacher will start and participate in a group, but often professionals are only involved when they are invited to attend a meeting as a resource person. A group needs to discuss and agree upon:

When and where to meet. It helps to have a quiet place with enough privacy to make people feel comfortable talking, perhaps a space in a community center, library, school, or place of worship. Choose a meeting day and time that allows the most people to participate. Make sure the space is accessible for someone with mobility issues, and see if providing childcare or anything else will make it easier for more people to join. If the group meets online, or mixes being in-person with being online, see if tech advice or access to digital devices is needed. Get help getting online from human-i-t.org or pcsforpeople.org.

What you hope to do. Have the group choose the topics to talk about. Give everyone a chance to express what they would like from the group: to talk about feelings, to share ideas about facing certain situations, to learn healing techniques, or something else. Try to keep expectations realistic. Support groups can be helpful in many ways, but they will not fix everything. (See ideas about handling the stresses that may arise in support groups.)

Share ideas about preferred words. Talk about any specific words that people would prefer to use or not use, so everyone is aware of these concerns. Even if there are differences in opinion about how people understand and use certain words, the group can commit to respect how each member wants to talk about themselves.

In our group, even though everyone had gotten a diagnosis saying they were “mentally ill,” some preferred saying they had survived trauma, had a spiritual emergency, had mental distress, or had other ways to refer to it. We talked a lot about how some terms ignore or erase who people are. We agreed each person could use the words that worked for them and that group members would work to respect that.

For “keep it private” let’s make sure we all mean the same thing.

Group agreements. While agreements can be added or changed as you go along, it is good to begin by deciding on basic rules so everyone feels safe about participating and sharing. One basic agreement might be to keep group discussions private. Another might be to avoid judging people or telling them what to do. Other agreements might cover what happens at meetings: how will members take turns to run meetings, give everyone a chance to speak, support careful listening and not interrupt each other, and commit to starting meetings on time. The group may also want to emphasize specific values, such as honest communication, humility, kindness, respect, or sobriety. The group can discuss whether additional people can join and if so, how that should happen.

If the group has been organized through a school or other institution or by an individual with legal requirements to report certain kinds of information to police or government authorities, it is important that everyone understands this before the group starts. Types of situations that may require reporting include a young person talking about harming themselves or saying they have been abused.

This page was updated:18 Apr 2025