ABSTRACT
Broadly defined, online support groups (OSGs) consist of a collection of people who share the same or similar circumstances or conditions joining together voluntarily via computer-based technology for the purpose of offering and receiving mutual support, sharing personal experiences, gathering information, pooling resources, and finding new ways of coping. In a more restrictive sense, and in order to distinguish them from online self-help groups, which are controlled by the members themselves, the term refers only to professionally run group strategies based on the protected effect of social support (Henry, 1997). Computerbased, cyber, electronic, email, Internet, network, technology-based, virtual, and Web-based are some of the other expressions used that are interchangeable with the term online to name this kind of group strategy in which members are physically separated and connected only by technology.
