Sitting with others: mental health self-help groups in northern Ghana

Qualitative research with 18 SHGs, five local non-governmental organisations, community mental health nurses, administrators in Ghana Health Services, and discussions with BasicNeeds staff.SHGs have the potential to serve as key components of community mental health programmes in low-resource settings. The strongest evidence concerns how SHGs provide a range of supports, e.g., social, financial, and practical, to service users and caregivers. The groups also appear to foster greater acceptance of service users by their families and by communities at large. Membership in SHGs appears to be associated with more consistent treatment and better outcomes for those who are ill.This study highlights the need for longitudinal qualitative and quantitative evaluations of the effect of SHGs on clinical, social and economic outcomes of service users and their carers.The organisation of SHGs appears to be associated with positive outcomes for service users and caregivers. However, there is a need to better understand how SHGs operate and the challenges they face.Mental health Self-help Groups (SHGs) may be defined as, "any mutual support oriented initiative directed by people with mental illness or their family members" [1]. SHGs may have different objectives: while some may be primarily concerned with the provision of peer support, others may devote their efforts toward changing public policies and, more broadly, changing public attitudes. Still others may focus on self-empowerment, including monitoring and critiquing the mental health services they are receiving [2,3].Over the past four decades, there has been increasing interest in SHGs by mental health services users and care-givers alike [1]. With this has come research demonstrating the benefits of participation in SHGs [4,5]. Research in high-income countries has demonstrated a number of benefits of participation in SHGs. For example, participation in an SHG for clients of the South Verona (Italy) Community Psychiatric Se