ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the contact and information centre for self help groups in Hamburg. One essential aim of the Contact Centre is to create a public climate which encourages and motivates people to take more and more responsibility for their own health, and no longer to leave concern and decisions about health and sickness solely to the professionals. This is often the first step which leads people into a self help group. To achieve this, the authors try to inform interested lay people and professionals about the work of self help groups and how they go about it, and to encourage them to be active themselves or to stimulate self help groups in their own professional fields. This contains details of the self help groups in the Hamburg area known to the authors, together with the most important agencies providing counselling and psychiatric social work.
