Crisis intervention: changing perspectives

The importance of crisis intervention as a method of professional practice is manifest in the frequency with which it is used, and the diversity of clients and crisis situations to which it is applied. Here is a random selection of crises which necessitate intervention; the professional, or ethical, or legal obligations to intervene should be apparent: A woman is battered by her cohabitee. She and her terrified pre-school children desperately seek refuge. A Pakistani child, aged 11, subjected to persistent racist bullying over a long period of time, bursts into tears during a school lesson. He is uncontrollable and the parents and the school staff feel helpless. An elderly confused man accidentally sets his house on fire. The neighbours rescue him; they are also elderly. They are in a state of fear and panic; he has subjected them to danger before, and they are certain he will do so again. They demand his removal, as does a GP and psychiatrist. A reconstituted family erupts in violence perpetrated by the stepfather against his teenage stepdaughter. He accuses her of deliberately sabotaging the family's attempts to achieve harmony and stability, and demands that she leaves. Two teenage children and their mother watch helplessly as three hooded men break into their home and murder the father in a sectarian attack. A man learns that he is HIV positive, through infection by his wife. She was infected through extramarital affairs which he knew nothing about. A Nigerian woman arrives in Britain, to be reunited with her husband. She speaks very little English. She is detained by immigration officers, who allege irregularities in her passpost and visa. She is told (unofficially) to 'get back to where she belongs'. Meanwhile, she is transported to a 'processing' centre, and denied access to her husband. She is extremely frightened, and dwells upon many unpleasant thoughts about what might happen to her. A man leaves his home, job, and spouse after a twenty-year period. He soon finds that he cannot cope with the changes he has brought upon himself. Nor does he feel that he can return. His mental health rapidly deteriorates. He attempts to kill himself. A woman agrees to her child being medically examined because of the suspicion that her cohabitee has sexually abused the child. The woman is deeply distressed by the allegation, but accepts that the examination is in everyone's interest, particularly the child's. However, she is totally unprepared for the detail of th