Acknowledgements 1 Definitions, scope, and origin of the health-related self-help group movement 2 An international tour of addiction-related mutual help organizations 3 Does self-help group participation produce positive substance abuse, psychiatric, and medical outcomes? 4 A different perspective on change in self-help organizations: spirituality, identity, life stories, friendship networks, and politicization 5 Government, health care organization, and clinical interactions with self-help organizations Epilogue: summing up, moving forward References Index

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Circles of recovery : self-help organizations for addictions

There have been few outcome studies on the Al-Anon component of A.A. In a convenience sample of 50 A.A. members, this study found no significant difference on reported family stress scores (IFR) between those who had a family member attending Al- Anon and those who did not have a family member attending. However, a significant correlation was found between increased duration of family member Al-Anon attendance and lower reported family stress scores for the A.A. member and the Al-Anon member. Al-Anon attendance was also significantly related to continuous attendance of A.A. by the alcoholic.

Assessing the Al-Anon Component of Alcoholics Anonymous

Circles of Recovery: An international tour of addiction-related mutual-help organizations

Moving beyond the treatment-outcome perspective The previous chapter concluded that participation in addiction-related self-help groups can promote improvement on important clinical outcomes, for example reduced substance abuse, psychopathology, and medical comorbidities. From some perspectives, inquiry should stop here, because the likely value of self-help groups as a treatment for substance abuse has been established. However, the clinical treatment-evaluation perspective on self-help groups is a necessary but insufficient lens through which to understand the effects of self-help group involvement. Self-help organizations resemble professional treatments in some respects, but they also have unique aspects that can influence members in ways not typically associated with healthcare interventions, and indeed some members who have already resolved their substance-abuse problem seek out self-help groups specifically for these other benefits (Kaskutas, 1994, 1996a). This chapter evaluates the implications of this reality for outcomes that are not usually considered part of the clinical treatment-evaluation perspective. A focus upon such outcomes follows naturally from the recognition that, in many ways, self-help organizations are more akin to communities than to treatments. Individuals participate in them for indefinite periods, structure social activities around them, actively work to keep them in existence, make friends within them, and so forth. In the process, members encounter a philosophy and set of values that some scholars termed the “mutual-help organization's “ideology”” (e.g., Antze, 1979; Cercle, 1984; Kassel & Wagner, 1993; Suler, 1984).

Circles of Recovery: A different perspective on change in self-help organizations: spirituality, identity, life stories, friendship networks, and politicization

Circles of Recovery: Epilogue: summing up, moving forward

A husband's membership in A.A. was related to greater marital happiness, superior ability as a father and less severe drinking problems.

Donald G. Fischer

Papers

Some correlates of Al-Anon group membership