Fundamentals of Crisis Counseling

Geri Miller

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780470438305
• eBook ISBN: 9781118156346
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

An indispensable handbook for assisting clients in crisis and in their journey toward healing

Integrating practical training with both research and theory, Fundamentals of Crisis Counseling offers students and professionals proven hands-on techniques to assist clients in recovery from crisis and towards an eventual return to their day-to-day lives.

Written in the author's gentle yet purposeful voice, this reader-friendly guide is filled with lessons on current evidence-based counseling, how to operate as a client stress manager, and information on finding resources that facilitate client resilience. In addition, the author helps counselors improve counseling effectiveness by gaining a better understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses and emphasizes the importance of self-care.

Stemming from the author's thirty-five years of experience as a crisis counselor, this book contains valuable information on:

• Crisis theory and intervention models
  
  

• Concepts, techniques, assessment, and treatment for disaster mental health work
  
  

• Legal and ethical concerns regarding working with individuals, groups, couples, and families
  
  

• Assessment and instrument selection
  
  

• Main concepts and techniques of brief therapy, motivational interviewing, stages of change, positive psychology, grief therapy, client resilience, and spirituality
  
  

• Multicultural crisis counseling techniques centered on age, gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity
  
  

• Counselor self-care complete with case studies and examples
  
  

Ideal for all mental health professionals looking for guidance on best practices in crisis counseling, this book is also suitable for training professionals and counseling students. The book includes access to an online instructor's test bank, PowerPoint slides, and syllabi in line with 2009 Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) standards.

Fundamentals of Crisis Counseling imparts useful knowledge on little utilized crisis counseling abilities, preparing counselors at every stage to effectively respond to the immediate and lasting affects of crisis.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction/Overview

Learning Objectives

1. To learn an overview of the philosophy of crisis counseling.

2. To understand the history of crisis counseling.

3. To develop awareness of areas related to crisis counseling, such as helpful characteristics of counselors and interagency collaboration.

Personal Reflections on the Overall Book

Whoever can see through all fear will always be safe.

—Tao Te Ching

A few comments regarding this book’s philosophy and approach toward crisis counseling need to be presented in this opening chapter. While sometimes this type of information is provided in the preface of a book, it is included in the introductory chapter of this text because of how significantly the underlying philosophy of this book influences each chapter and the general framework of the book.

The motivation for this book stems from my experiences with crisis counseling during 35 years of clinical work. These professional crisis counseling experiences have been augmented recently by my work as a disaster mental health worker with the American Red Cross. This work began in response to the 9/11 attacks in New York and has expanded over the past 10 years to local and state disasters. These combined clinical experiences have resulted in the guiding question used to write this book: “What information is essential to assist mental health professionals in doing crisis work?” This book has evolved from that question and focuses on the goal of the crisis counseling captured in the Tao Te Ching quote at the start of the chapter: to help the client see through the fears of the crisis and feel safe enough in counseling to make the best life-enhancing decisions possible.

In order to assist the client in seeing through the crisis and feeling safe enough to make life-enhancing decisions, the counselor is metaphorically acting as a lighthouse for the client; the client can focus on the guidance of the counselor as the tumultuous waters of the crisis are navigated. As we each think of personal or professional crises we have navigated, we know the power of a caring person simply staying with us through the journey. There is a deep, abiding, sustaining connection offered by the counselor to the client in a crisis situation when the counselor is able to be present with the client and reach out with compassion in response to the client’s suffering. The counselor also needs to: (a) help clients proactively respond to the crisis situation, in order to give them a sense of self-control (empowerment); (b) assist clients in getting back into some aspects of their daily routines (activities, rituals), in order to be reassured that the world is a safe place; and (c) provide them with a safe place to vent, where the counselor is listening to the client’s storyline (the crisis) but not becoming lost in it to the point of feeling helpless him- or herself or of being drawn to rescue the client and thereby encourage unnecessary dependency of the client on the counselor.

This book, then, is an attempt to provide the reader with practical, hands-on crisis counseling information that will assist clients in crisis and help them heal in their recovery from the crisis. The book can be used as a primer, a handbook presenting an overview of crisis counseling that can be used in clinical work. This can be particularly useful to the reader, because while all clinicians need to be ready to do effective crisis counseling, many of us do not do this work full time. Instead, we have a tendency to integrate this approach into our clinical work when situations arise with clients that require us to have a crisis counseling mindset and crisis counseling skills. Different factors, such as internal client factors (e.g., specific mental health diagnoses that result in the client going in and out of crisis states) or external factors (e.g., life situations such as divorce or natural disasters) may influence the necessary shift to a crisis counseling emphasis in clinical work. To apply effective, timely interventions that operate in the best interests of the client, the reader needs to be prepared to quickly shift to a crisis counseling perspective, often relying solely on his/her clinical judgment under the adage of “the buck stops here.”

Because crisis situations require thoughtful clinical decisions that need to be made quickly, the book is designed to expose the reader to an overview of aspects of crisis counseling that one might use infrequently, at best, in clinical work. This approach is intended to help hone the reader’s assessment and treatment approach and to enhance the skills that might be required in the crisis counseling situation. The self-reflective aspect of the book (questions, case studies, exercises, etc.) is designed to assist the reader in developing or enhancing his/her crisis counseling mindset by creating an interactive experience between the book and the reader.

This interactive approach is meant to help the reader understand his/her own crisis counseling strengths and weaknesses with the goal of enhancing his/her effectiveness. This self-assessment involves knowledge of critical components, such as: (a) current evidence-based, practical crisis counseling approaches and techniques; (b) operation as an “environmental stress manager” for the client; (c) development of internal and external resources that facilitate client resilience; and (d) self-care approaches that result in the reduction or elimination of burnout.

Finally, the term “counselor” is used throughout the text to describe the mental health professional reader. Readers may identify with different mental health professions and use different labels to describe their work. The term counselor has been chosen by the author as a term that represents the application of crisis counseling skills. While it is true that there are emphasis differences in crisis counseling among professionals (due to orientation and training), there are also similar themes and approaches that bridge these differences. While I have attempted to be sensitive to these variances, the reader is asked to acknowledge any limitations of the terminology used in this book and to not allow these limitations to block the potential usefulness of the text.

Definitions of Crisis, Crisis Counseling, and Crisis Intervention

There are numerous definitions for crisis (James, 2008). Typically, the crisis is made up of an event that occurs before the crisis, the client’s perception of the event, and the client’s previous coping strategies not being enough in the situation (Roberts, 2005). It is a state of upset-disorganization that is temporary and has the potential for either a “radically positive or negative outcome” (Slaikeu, 1990, p. 15). Essentially, the various definitions state the same components of a crisis: the client’s perception or experience of an event/situation as being intolerable and going beyond their resources and coping abilities. There are three components of the crisis: an event, the client’s perception, and the failure of the client’s typical coping methods (Kanel, 2007). As human beings we are, at least temporarily, unable to find relief in the crisis situation (Hoff, Hallisey, & Hoff, 2009).

When the individual does reach out for assistance, the reaching out can, obviously, include counseling. There are two main components to crisis counseling: first-order intervention (psychological first aid) and second-order intervention (crisis therapy) (Slaikeu, 1990). The first-order intervention of crisis counseling (psychological first aid) has been defined by the National Institute of Mental Health (2002) as making sure clients are safe, stress-related symptoms are reduced, clients have opportunities to rest and recover physically, and clients are connected to the resources and social supports they need to survive and recover from the crisis. The term “psychological first aid” originated in a description of crisis work in response to an Australian railway disaster (Raphael, 1977). It is considered the basic component of crisis intervention (James, 2008).

The goal at this stage of psychological first aid is to break up the behavior cycle that is dysfunctional and help the person return to their previous functioning level. Slaikeu (1990) breaks this stage into five components: psychological contact, problem exploration, solution exploration, concrete action taken, and follow-up. Overall assessment of the client can be done through the BASIC personality profile (Slaikeu, 1990) as described by Miller (2010, p. 100):

1. Behavioral. This area focuses on the client’s behavior in terms of strengths and weaknesses as well as behavioral antecedents and consequences.

2. Affective. The counselor assesses the client’s feelings about these behaviors.

3. Somatic. The counselor assesses the client’s physical health through sensations experienced.

4. Interpersonal. This area focuses on examining the quality of various relationships in the client’s life.

5. Cognitive. The counselor assesses the client’s thoughts and self-talk.

When counselors respond, they are intervening in the crisis. In this intervention, counselors are basically assessing the crisis situation at that moment, stabilizing the person, and assisting in the development of a plan to help them move out of the crisis mode. In crisis intervention, the counselor tries to reduce the crisis impact by immersing him- or herself into the client’s life and assisting in the development of resources. This involves crisis therapy along a continuum that includes assessment, planning, implementation, and follow-up; the crisis intervention is woven into the context of therapy (Hoff et al., 2009).

Counseling interventions in therapy need to be sensitively timed for the client, because the crisis is both a danger and an opportunity. It is dangerous in that the client may resort to destructive behavior (suicide, homicide), but it is an opportunity because the client may reorganize him/herself and his/her life by reaching out for assistance and thereby developing new knowledge and skills. It is in this development of new knowledge and skills that the counselor can be immeasurably significant in the client’s life; this is where therapy can have a long-lasting impact. A well-designed, sensitively timed intervention that is idiosyncratically matched to the individual client and his/her situation can change a life forever.

History of Crisis Intervention

Crisis intervention work has been around since 1942, when the staff of Massachusetts General Hospital responded to the Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire in Boston, where 493 people died (Lindemann, 1944). In their work with survivors and families of the victims, the hospital staff studied their acute and delayed reactions and clinically addressed psychological symptoms (survivors) and the prevention of unresolved grief (family members) (Roberts, 2005). In addition to Lindemann, Gerald Caplan (1961) also worked with these survivors and was a pioneer in defining and developing theory related to crisis (stages). Rapoport (1967) added to Lindemann’s and Caplan’s work by showing that an event led to a crisis and by describing the nature of the event more precisely, as well as emphasizing the importance of the intervention—particularly in assessment (Roberts, 2005).

This work continued into the 1960s, when suicide prevention (e.g., 24-hour hotlines) and community mental health (e.g., mental health clinics, managing psychiatric patients on medication on an outpatient basis) became popular concerns in the United States. Crisis intervention strategies and research grew out of these concerns (Kanel, 2007). Three major grassroots movements impacted crisis intervention: Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), activism by veterans from the Vietnam War, and the women’s movement (James, 2008). The impact came because these three groups of people needed hel...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter One: Introduction/Overview
• Chapter Two: Crisis Theories, Domains, and Intervention Models
• Chapter Three: Disaster Mental Health Counseling
• Chapter Four: Settings and Commonly Occurring Diagnoses
• Chapter Five: Special Populations and Legal/Ethical Issues
• Chapter Six: Assessment
• Chapter Seven: Current Additional Therapies and Concepts
• Chapter Eight: Working With Different Cultures
• Chapter Nine: Self-Care
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index