Reading Report 3: Slaikeu, K. (1990) “Crisis Intervention” Westwood edition. P.

26-39

● Viney suggests that the concept of crisis resolution includes: the restoration of
equilibrium, cognitive mastery of the situation and the development of new coping
strategies, including behavioral changes and the appropriate use of external resources.
● Positive crisis resolution can be understood as: "Translaborating the crisis event so that
it is integrated into the fabric of life by allowing the person to be open rather than closed
to the future".
● Translaborating involves assisting the person in exploring the crisis event and his or her
reaction to it.
● Crisis therapy involves facilitating experiences that include: reflection on the event and
its meaning to the person in crisis, expression of feelings, maintaining a minimum
degree of physical well-being during the crisis, and making appropriate interpersonal and
behavioral adaptations to the situation.
● The integration of the event into the fabric of life means that the crisis is resolved, the
event and its consequences must finally take their places alongside other vital and
determining events in the person's life, to become part of an evolving experience.
● Being open to face the future and being prepared for the task of living is also conceived
as being equipped to face them.
● Significant material resources during a crisis include: money, food, housing and
transportation. A deficit in any of these areas has the potential to moderately change a
stressful event into a crisis.
● Personal resources including: strength of self, previous history of coping with stressful
situations, the existence of any unresolved personality problems, and physical well-being
all play a part in determining whether a particular event will lead to a crisis.
● Social resources refer to people in your immediate individual environment at the time of
the crisis, such as family, friends and co-workers.
● Unger and Powell describe three types of help that social contacts can provide during
the time of crisis.
○ The first is utilitarian support, which consists of giving material help such as food,
clothing, shelter, or money to lessen financial burdens.
○ The second is emotional support, specifically by communicating to a person in
crisis that he or she is loved, protected, and valued by family and friends.
○ Finally, social contacts can provide information and outreach to other helping
resources.
● Crisis does not necessarily indicate psychopathology or normalcy. However, it is
characteristically viewed as positive, a concept oriented toward growth and health, rather
than one related to illness or disease.
● General Systems Theory proposes that we look at the context in which the person lives
and, in particular, at the interactions between the person, various subsystems and the
environment.
● We can then consider a person as a system, whose BASIC functioning includes five
subsystems: Behavioral, Affective, Somatic, Interpersonal and Cognitive.
● The state of crisis will be characterized by disorganization in one or more of these five
subsystems.
● For example, Lewis et al. have used dimensions such as the following in the study of
family functioning:
○ Family structure (including manifest power, parental alliances, closeness, and
"the law of the strongest").
○ Mythology (family beliefs and self-concepts that persist even when they involve
distortions of reality).
○ Negotiation skills (effectiveness in problem solving and conflict resolution
methods).
○ Autonomy (including communication styles and whether or not the family
encourages its members to fulfill their personal responsibilities).
○ Family affect (including expression of feelings, moods and family harmony, the
degree of conflict and empathy present in family members).
● Crisis environment
○ The microsystem represents the family and the immediate social group.
○ The exosystem represents the social structure of the community.
○ The macrosystem is the largest of the contextual structures and includes the
cultural values and belief systems that interfere between communities, families
and between individuals.
● There are three essential functions for any system:
○ adaptation to the environment
○ integration of the various subsystems
○ decision making.
■ Disorganization in any of the three can lead to a crisis.