Self-help groups: the members' perspectives.

The emergence of self-help groups as an important source of help-giving for persons with psychological problems has occurred without a systematic attempt to tap an important source of information about this phenomenon: the members themselves. Eighty members of nine self-help groups were surveyed. The results of this study suggest that self-help groups serve a different population than do professional therapists, that the help-giving processes are mainly supportive in nature, and that an optimistic attitude toward increased collaboration between professional care-givers and self-help groups is justified. Questions for further research are discussed.

Subclinical depression and performance expectations, evaluations of performance, and actual performance.

Four hundred sixty-nine female and 311 male college students were administered a depression scale, an analogies test, and questions related to expectations and evaluations of performance. As predicted, significant negative correlations were found between subclinical depression and expectations and evaluations of performance. A significant negative correlation between depression and actual performance was apparent for females only. However, this correlation was much weaker than similar correlations previously reported for college student populations. It was concluded that low performance expectations constitute one dimension of subclinical depression. This suggests that Beck's theory of clinical depression, which holds that negative self-perceptions and other cognitions are importantly involved in depression, may be useful in understanding normal mood variation. The findings also suggest that some similarities exist between clinically and subclinically depressed groups in that both groups are reported to hold low performance expectations, but display minimal performance deficits.