At support group meetings, people share experiences, personal feelings, information, and strategies for living successfully with mood disorders.  There are six key elements of a DBSA chapter’s support groups.

 

1. Focus on Self-Help
The DBSA self-help process is based on certain assumptions:

• Each person has the ability to make appropriate use of available resources to meet her or his own needs. Some people may utilize this ability more fully than others, but it is present in everyone.

• All of us together know more than any one of us. Everyone has value and has something to add to a group process.

• Each person is the ultimate authority on what s/he needs and on what will work for her or him. (Adapted from Leading Self-Help Groups by Lucretia Mallory, 1984)

 

2. Peer-Led
Discussion at support group meetings is facilitated by a group participant, and this is important to the group’s smooth functioning. The group facilitator is a mental health consumer or friend/family member. The facilitator guides discussion, provides focus to the group, and helps ensure that the group’s guidelines are followed.

 

3. Safe and Accepting
Participants make the support group a safe place by fostering a supportive, trustworthy, respectful, non-judgmental, and nurturing atmosphere. All those attending share experiences that can help others live successfully with depression or bipolar disorder. People use information they’ve gained from others at the meeting and the mental health professionals they work with to make their own judgments about correct strategies for themselves.

 

4. Confidential
Open and honest communication is important to a positive group experience.  Support groups operate on the following premise: "What we say here stays here.”  No one may publicly reveal information about the people attending the group or what is said during a meeting.  Exceptions to this policy are made only when the safety of an individual is in danger.  Participants are not required to be members or provide personal contact information if they do not wish to do so. DBSA and its affiliated chapters and support groups never make public or sell/rent group membership or participant lists. 

 

5. Meet Regularly
The group determines how often, when, and where it meets. It is suggested that support groups meet at least once every month; most groups meet weekly or twice monthly. The Pittsburgh chapter meets weekly.

 

6. Free of Charge
Support groups that are part of a DBSA chapter must hold meetings that are open to the public and free of charge. No fee is required to attend. Groups may request optional donations to defray meeting costs, such as refreshments, or may establish optional group dues to be used for group-related purposes (for example, to place an advertisement in a local newspaper or publish and mail a newsletter), but attending the support group must be free of charge.