Disability Support & Understanding

A Variety of Support Groups Exist for Any Disability

Mar 29, 2009

Newly disabled and need someone to talk to who's been there? Lived with a disability for years and have a wealth of helpful advice to offer? A support group can help.

A variety of support groups are available to help you cope with your, your spouse’s or your child’s specific disability. With all the medical help and professional advice that is readily available these days, sometimes just having someone to listen and empathize is the “best medicine” there is.

If you want to find a support group in your area, the first logical step is the phone book. Most phone books include a heading for support groups in the yellow pages. If you come up empty, try calling your local hospital, visiting nurse’s association or even the YMCA. All of these places will most likely have the contact information for the specific type of support group you are looking for.

If you can’t find a support group for your specific disability, you could consider starting one of your own. It’s a fairly easy process to start a support group:

First, determine the level of interest for the support group in your area. Make a flyer. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy; just ask if people would be interested in joining a support group for your type of disability and be sure to include your name, phone number and a date by which interested parties should reply. Hang the flyers on campus, church or community bulletin boards. You could also put an ad in the newspaper. Or you might consider contacting a national organization for your disability. While this is not necessary for your support group, national organizations often have information that small, local support groups find helpful.

Once you have established that interest exists in your topic and have enough initial responses to your support group, you’ll need to find a leader. The leader of the support group can be you or someone who responded to your ad. Ask a friend or someone in your church to head the group. If you can’t find a leader right away, don’t get discouraged. Just remember that you’re doing something good for yourself and for others.

After these initial steps have been taken, you’ll need to find a space for your support group to meet. Hospitals, churches and schools often make space available to support groups. You could even consider hosting the support group in your own home. Another idea would be to rotate meetings among different members of the group, each week holding the meeting in the home of a different member.

If you are newly disabled or just not that comfortable around a large group of people, there are a multitude of disability-specific support groups online. These websites offer a network of support and advice or just a place to hang out, chat and make new friends. Some of the websites you can visit to find a support network include Firefly, Disabilities-R-Us and Surviving Paralysis.

Whatever you are looking for, there is a support group out there that can help you find it.

The copyright of the article Disability Support & Understanding in Disabilities is owned by Megan Drummond. Permission to republish Disability Support & Understanding in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.