This last decade has seen the dramatic growth of self-help groups as well as the escalation of reported depression. It is not a coincidence that these two seemingly separate subjects rise from a common background: that is, feelings of isolation and helplessness in combination with an existing problem.
According to many writers in the field, self-help groups have developed in response to the impersonal structure of a society which fails to meet the needs of many of its members. Those involved in setting up self-help groups have told these writers that they felt left out and helpless. These self-help group people had also observed that, without special training, many people apparently could successfully help each other. Peer counselling has been seen to often equal, and sometimes surpass, the expertise of the credentialled professional. Peer counselling, when in the setting of self-help groups, has the added advantage of self-help group interactions and might well be considered to be a valuable form of treatment for depression.
Despite the multitude of programs which have been organized to relieve psychological distress and to increase life satisfactions, there has not been much response to the needs of the isolated woman-at-home. Her reported loneliness and perceived helplessness may very well make her vulnerable to the onset of depression. Sociologist George Brown in London reported in his 1978 research that a high incidence of depression seems to be occurring among those women who remain at home. He identified such vulnerability factors as: having three or more children under the age of fourteen at home, the lack of outside employment, and the lack of confiding relationship. I do not mean to imply that staying home is pathogenic, but rather that the isolation and helplessness experienced by many of these women make them more susceptible to depression than ever before. Because we live in an increasingly mobile society, the traditional family support systems and social networks which we once knew now seem to be rapidly fading away for many of us.