Where to Find Help for Most Problems

People who talk about rebuilding “villages” often picture an old-time agricultural community. “If my crops get locusts, your crops have locusts too. If your fields are flooded, so are mine. We share those things. We always have somebody to talk to,” said Ruth Hollman, executive director of the Self-Help and Recovery Exchange (SHARE!), a grass-roots referral service for Los Angeles County.

No more. “If you take any neighborhood in L.A., nobody has the same problems,” said Hollman, an anthropologist. “We’re not dealing with the flood. We’re dealing with cancer. With alcoholic family members. With divorce. With heart disease.” And many people these days don’t want to get to know their neighbors. “They want to know somebody who’s like them,” Hollman said. (She noted, too, that the county funds mental health treatment only for adults with genetic problems.)

The free service helps people sort through the more than 7,000 mutual-help meetings in the county; topics include gambling, attention deficit disorder, workaholism, fear of success, overeating, recovery from mental illness, being abusive or abused, smoking and many others. There is even a group for men dealing with the effects of botched circumcisions.

Last year, SHARE! received a $110,000 grant from the Wellness Foundation to revive a similar service at UCLA. Its volunteers help callers find the right groups--even if the names sound wrong, Hollman said. Because there are no Anorexia Anonymous or Dysfunctional Family groups, she said volunteers steer people with those concerns to Overeaters Anonymous or Adult Children of Alcoholics. The volunteers field about 40 calls a day but could handle up to 200, she said.

What support groups offer people with moderate psychological problems is the one thing they are often missing: community.

Hollman said she searched for years to understand how childhood abuse was affecting her adult life. Finally, at 33, she found her first support group. “I walked in there and it was as if I had come home,” she said. “For the first time in my life, I felt I belonged someplace.”

SHARE! may be reached by calling (310) 305-8878.

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Reader Input

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Readers with instructive experiences of community therapy, either inspiring or horrifying, are invited to send us brief capsules for possible publication. We are also interested in general comments on this series and ideas to help with future stories, which will look at such issues as neighborhood foster care, small-town architecture, changing attitudes toward youth, and other ways of fostering community ties.

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