[1] Riessman's model has inspired subsequent research and practice by scholars, clinicians, and indigenous populations to address a variety of social and health-related issues plaguing individuals and communities around the world.
[1] Riessman posited several different mechanisms which may facilitate the benefits experienced by an individual engaged in a helping role: Lepore, Buzaglo, Liberman, Golant, Greener, and Davey (2014) investigated the helper-therapy principle in a randomized control trial of a "prosocial", other-focused Internet Support Group (P-ISG) designed to elicit peer-instigated, supportive interactions online among female breast cancer survivors.
[2] When compared to female breast cancer survivors who participated in a standard, self-focused Internet Support Group (S-ISG), which was not designed to explicitly provide opportunities for helping interactions to take place, analyses found that individuals in the P-ISG condition did provide more support to others yet P-ISG participants experienced a higher level of depression and anxiety following the intervention than those in S-ISG.
[2] Arnold, Calhoun, Tedeschi, and Cann (2005) explored both the positive and negative sequelae of providing psychotherapy to clients who had experienced trauma and subsequent posttraumatic growth by conducting naturalistic interviews with a small sample of clinicians (N = 21).
This finding suggests that the helper-therapy principle may operate in a clinical context whereby therapists (i.e., the helpers) benefit from engaging in the process of providing treatment to psychotherapy clients who have survived traumatic experiences.
Melkman, Mor-Salwo, Mangold, Zeller, & Benbenishty (2015) used a grounded theory approach to understand 1) the motivations and experiences which led young adult "careleavers" (N = 28, aged 18–26) in Israel and Germany to assume a helper role and 2) the benefits they report enjoying as a result of helping others through volunteerism and/or human-service focused careers.
These participants reported that helping others provided them with a sense of purpose in their lives, and also increased self-efficacy, social connectedness, and ability to cope with personal issues.
They explicitly link social liberation, the last of the ten processes of change articulated by the model (the others being: consciousness raising, self-reevaluation, helping relationships, self-liberation, environmental reevaluation, dramatic relief/emotional arousal, stimulus control, reinforcement management, and counterconditioning) to the helper-therapy principle, along with a related concept known as bidirectional support (Maton, 1988).