created: 01.10.2004
last modified: 01.10.2004
But for the affected the process of coping with the disease doesn't end with this realization neither in the medical, nor in the psychological or social sense. Often even the closest family members and friends can't help. Most of the times the advice and the support needed to cope with the disease or disability in long time terms is provided by self-aid groups only.
The institutionalised health care system often regards its patients as objects. Symptoms are being looked at one by one. Human beings get reduced to a special assembly of symptoms. A young mother, a woman in midst of her career or a grandfather could become "a lung cancer", "a stroke" or "a diabetes", as if there were no difference between them. Psychological and social dimensions stay completely neglected. Holistic approaches are rare exceptions. There's no room for individuality when you're ill. The situation is similar for disabled people or the relatives of the person affected.
Another perspective is highly important for the principle of self-aid: The patients are considered experts in their own case. They are being attested competence because they are affected. Self-aid can do a lot by giving you courage and it can shorten the long way from the first symptoms to the diagnosis. It can inspire you to a self-responsible way of dealing with the disease out of the mazes of the long and often unavailing ways of our health care system.
Self-aid groups can support therapy approaches not only by giving advice but also by care, social warmth and procuring the courage of living. It can provide and support the energy and the willpower that is necessary for patients to cope with long time diseases or lifelong problems.
The feeling to be able to rely on support, to be understood or simply not be alone with a problem can hardly be measured in its value.
In the past, economy measures have lead to absurd incisions in this sector. The health care system is relieved by self-aid groups and organisations in a scarcely measurable extent. Economical estimations show without doubt: Every Euro, that's spent to support self-aid, pushes forward gratuitous and honorary work with 5-10 times the value.
Self-aid can increase the quality of living, and decrease people's risk of illness immensely: Advice, health education, improved communication to the medical personnel as well as between the affected people and pointing to alternative solutions are the guarantees for the success of the idea of self-aid.
Open aims are the promising concept for our tarnished health care system: The human being with his individual needs must be in the centre of attention. It must not be the institutions of the health care system that tell where to go and how to get there. Self-aid is an act of emancipation by all means, because the patients turn themselves from objects into subjects.
Empty tills can never be a reason to take the dash out of the dynamic development of the self-aid initiatives.
