Self-care is not a solipsistic trap: a reply to critics.

This paper is an answer to criticism of the self-care, self-help movement in health recently advanced by Robert Crawford and other writers. The authors review the multiple and varied origins, motivations, and ideologies associated with self-care developments. It is maintained that the self-care movement embodies a broad, popular social resistance to the ills, inequities, and iatrogenic elements in highly technological health care systems. Empirical examination of specific programs and formulations of this movement reveals that it cannot be fitted into a simplistic "victim-blaming" ideology, but instead operates to decrease dependence and heighten individual and political/social awareness of hazards to health.