Crisis intervention delineates the techniques utilized to provide immediate or short term aid to individuals who have undergone experiences that trigger physical, emotional, mental and behavioral problems or distresses. Crisis intervention relates to psychological care offered to individuals to restore equilibrium of their bio-psycho-social capabilities and alleviate the likelihood of suffering long term psychological trauma ( Boscarino, 2015) . A crisis can be any scenario that impairs an individual’s stability to use their effective coping and problem solving skills. Crisis situations can be inform of sudden death of a loved one, severe physical injury, school violence, domestic abuse, sexual assault, medical, illness, divorce or natural disasters. Crisis intervention encompasses utilization of non-counselling approaches for example psychological first aid and more technical models meant to reduce the intensity of a person’s emotional, physical, mental and behavioral reaction to a destabilizing situation.
Domestic Abuse Situations
Domestic abuse relates to acts of battering or assaultive behavior between people involved in either current or former cohabiting relationships. Any form of physical violence, verbal or behavioral intimidations to significant others is tantamount to intimate partner violence or domestic abuse. The raising of awareness that domestic abuse is an epidemic has led to an exponential proliferation of intervention attempts.
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The Battered Woman Scale is an assessment intervention approach that quantifies traits arising from experiences in battering relationships. Abused women may manifest post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. The Battered Woman Scale places battered women within the PSTD category of DSM-5 for diagnostic purposes. The BWS successfully differentiates women who have undergone battering experiences in the past from those who have not.
Clinical Interview is considered an appropriate assessment device for partner aggression. The intervention strategy takes into account family history by asking questions relating to acts of hitting, forced sex, alcohol and drug use, property destruction, paranoia and partner’s hypervigilance about an orchestrator’s actions. Previous studies have found that only 14% of abused women solicit assistance after the first battery incident ( Hackett et al., 2016) . Clinical interview assessment is imperative in soliciting for safety of battered victim and that of significant others such as children. Clinical interview is meant to communicate compassion, open door for self-disclosure and provide valuable information to battered women.
Facilitative listening and responding is a crucial intervention strategy in domestic abuse situations. When a battered victim calls the abuse center, the crisis worker picking the phone ought to actively listen, be supportive, act as an advocate and be concerned with the caller’s safety ( Boscarino, 2015) . Facilitative listening is pivotal in enabling the victim know that the crisis worker is sympathetic and non-judgmental about her present situation. Supportive listening encourages women to open up and share their feelings about the domestic abuse situation (CCMH/558). Facilitative and supportive response gives the victim an implicit and explicit leeway to ventilate and serves as an opportunity to alleviate the woman’s traumatic circumstances.
Advocacy intervention aims at offering assistance to domestic abuse victims through the court process. Due to isolation of battered women, most have superficial knowledge about alternatives open to them. The court process addresses the women’s right and options with regard to welfare and legal systems. Advocacy offers domestically abused women court advocates who are conversant with laws and can weave through red tapes obstacles ( Hackett et al., 2016) .
Offering shelters is a crucial response integrated within domestic abuse program. Shelters are long term facilities where battered women can stay for a short or long period. The shelters are staffed around the clock with an open door policy for walk-ins. The sheltering strategy offers counseling, medical support and links abused victims to emergency housing facilities.
The Duluth Model integrates community agencies, police, mental health institutions and judiciary to offer services to domestic abuse victims. The model also aims at transforming the batterers’ mistaken beliefs and old age stereotypes with regard to relationships and use of aggression towards settling wrangles.
Situations of School Violence
School violence encompasses scenarios characterized by events such as bullying, suicides and shootings. The school violence also encompasses everyday crisis that afflict students, administrators, teachers and parents.
Counselling is an intervention strategy that addresses school gang members known to perpetrate violence. The intervention involves having a continuing, non-judgmental, non-evaluative and person centered discourse with gang members. Counselling aims at challenging the violent kids to start establishing trust and rapport ( Barnes et al., 2014) . Counselling utilizes reality therapy and targets gang member’s behavior. The intervention strategy confronts violent individuals with their actions by giving them a smorgasbord of choices on what they want to do.
Guidance programs are lecture based interventions that target to build self-esteem, arouse fear and stimulate moral appeal in dealing with bullying or gangs. Guidance programs provide direct student involvement through behavioral rehearsal, role play and modelling in areas such as peer meditation, anger management and conflict resolution. To be effective, the programs ought to be intense, have easily implemented practices and be accompanied with follow-up sessions to reinforce behavior in both victimizers and victims ( Barnes et al., 2014) .
PREPaRE Model an abbreviation for Prevent, Reaffirm, Evaluate, Provide ad Respond, is an imperative framework in alleviating school violence. The model incorporates psychological preparation, physical health, risk evaluation, security promotion and stress management. PREPaRE model includes assembling of teams, potential trauma evaluation and offering of crisis services. The model uses a three tier approach in form of classroom meeting, individuals based intervention and psychotherapy (CCMH/558). The framework offers training opportunities and highlights tasks to be done prior to, during and after a crisis situation.
Situations of Grief
Grief is a crisis situation precipitated by primary loses such as death of a friend, spouse, parent or child. The loss may inflict trauma and a profound lasting effect on a person’s life. Grief is a psychic state characterized by emotional suffering and mental anguish following bereavement
Quality of Object Relations (QOR) is a response inventory used in measuring recurring relationship patterns from primitive to mature. The intervention technique is applied to identify individuals who qualify as candidates who ought to meet a grief therapist. Individuals operating at the primitive scale react with intense anxiety which affects their functioning deleteriously ( Linde et al., 2017) . The QOR assessment technique refers such persons to grief therapists.
Affective strategies are imperative in permitting emotional catharsis through a smorgasbord of negative emotions that range from crying to angry swearing. Emotional dysregulation is a major concern in problematic grieving. Affective intervention strategies sets stage for emotional exposure to enable the grieving person regain regulating abilities. The intervention aims at achieving full emotional regulation through carefully graded and step wise exposure to experiencing sorrowful episodes (CCMH/558). Spiritual strategies are critical in enabling individuals transcend the loss through faith based interventions. The intervention incorporates activities such as reading scripture, prayer, burning incense at an altar, spending time stargazing and meditation to activate spiritual resources.
The Adaptive Grieving Model focuses on cultivating flexibility and ability to operate in a fluid manner. The model underscores the need to have high degree of ability and skill to function in an electric manner across a plethora of therapeutic modalities. The Adaptive Grieving Model addresses affective, spiritual, cognitive and behavioral reactions of clients. The Dual Process Model is applied in identifying and exploring restoration, loss stressors, confrontation and avoidance responses used by a grieving client ( Linde et al., 2017) . The model exhorts and tolerates oscillations related to orientation stressors to push the grieving client towards restoration.
How crisis management and counseling differs between these situations
Crisis management and counselling for the discussed situations differs in that the former pursues short term strategies to hasten damage and deterioration during and immediately after experiencing a traumatic event. Crisis counselling for situations such as domestic violence, grieving and school violence differs from crisis management as it is followed by counselling for long term improvement for the victim’s personal and mental well-being ( Boscarino, 2015) . Crisis counselling focusses on dealing with a person’s current status by helping the client cope with prevailing trauma and stressors. Crisis management on the other hand aims at reducing the intensity of behavioral, physical, emotional and mental reactions related to the discussed situations. Unlike crisis management, crisis counselling is brief, time limited and works with specific goals to achieve client stability, increase internal sense of safety and empowerment.
Conclusion
Physical, mental, emotional and behavioral distresses prompt utilization of crisis intervention to restore an individual’s biopsychosocial functioning. Intervention strategies, response techniques and models aim at minimizing the potential for long term trauma. A number of effective strategies and models can be applied in situations of domestic violence, school violence and scenarios of grief. The Battered Woman Scale, Clinical Interview, facilitative listening, advocacy intervention, sheltering and Duluth model play a pivotal role in addressing situations of domestic violence. Counselling, lecture based guidance programs and PREPaRE Model are instrumental in responding to school violence masterminds. Situations of grief can be alleviated through interventions such as affective strategies, Adaptive Grieving Model and the Dual Process Framework.
References
Barnes, T. N., Smith, S. W., & Miller, M. D. (2014). School-based cognitive-behavioral interventions in the treatment of aggression in the United States: A meta-analysis. Aggression and violent behavior , 19 (4), 311-321.
Boscarino, J. A. (2015). Community disasters, psychological trauma, and crisis intervention. International journal of emergency mental health , 17 (1), 369.
Linde, K., Treml, J., Steinig, J., Nagl, M., & Kersting, A. (2017). Grief interventions for people bereaved by suicide: A systematic review. PLoS One , 12 (6).
Hackett, S., McWhirter, P. T., & Lesher, S. (2016). The therapeutic efficacy of domestic violence victim interventions. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse , 17 (2), 123-132.
CCMH/558: Crisis Intervention and Trauma
