Crisis Intervention

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Some examples of when a crisis intervention might be needed by a counselor is in a case where there is a suicide, death, grief and loss; college shootings; gang activity; natural disasters; drug abuse; sexual and physical abuse; and medical emergencies. Usually, when an intervention is needed, college counselors are one of the first in line to take steps to calm the student down. While, the above examples are indeed moments when a counselor might be needed, colleges specific crisis interventions would most likely arise out of suicides or suicide attempts or threats that are fairly frequent among the college student population (Nugent, p. 290). College is a cesspool for stress that is caused by competition for grades, lack of support, indifferent …show more content…
Feelings of loneliness and isolation, relationship breakups, death of a relative or friends are also common enough in college life that a counselor might be needed and be considered needed in a crisis intervention (Nugent, p. 291). In places where emergency situations most often occur, immediate intervention is needed to determine whether a crisis is of short duration or will be prolonged requiring hospitalization, drug therapy, and or notification of the student’s family. If a crisis is temporary, follow up counseling with the student may be needed. If hospitalization is needed the family must be informed and student affairs in charge will usually take …show more content…
With good intentions, the Community Mental Health Centers were created to provide services through inpatient treatment, outpatient treatment, partial hospitalization programs, emergency/crisis treatment, and consultation/education (Nugent, p. 294). Unfortunately, some of the biggest issues with the community health centers was the primary source of community funding, the untrained counselors, the unmanageable case load for counselors, and not enough beds for patients. When the CMHC Act was passed the federal government hoped that each center would become self-sufficient and so they built a provision into the law that stated, with every year passing funding would slowly get reduced. This provision in the law made funds difficult to obtain from the beginning and caused an array of issues noted above. Although this law caused many new counselors to join the force they were not trained very well in their disciplines and so you had unqualified counselors working with clients not really knowing what to do. In addition, that made the caseload for counselors unmanageable and with funding being reduced more and more patients were being turned away. Much of the fees that counseling services receive for their services come from third party reimbursements also known as managed care. Managed care is a general