Análisis de las variables

The Victim Services Agency in New York has a 24-hour crime victim and domestic violence hotline, staffed by 68 counselors and 20 volunteers, that responded to approximately 71,000 callers in 1998. The following is a case illustration of a battered woman who required many calls, hours of commit- ment from the crisis worker, and case coordination to resolve her life-threat- ening situational crisis.

Jasmine

An emergency call was received at 8:00 one morning from Jasmine, the 15- year-old daughter of Serita, who begged the crisis worker to help her mom, frantically explaining, “My mom’s live-in boyfriend is going to kill her.” The crisis worker reported that the daughter described previous incidents of vio- lence perpetrated by the boyfriend. Jasmine described a serious argument that had erupted at 6:00 that morning, with loud yelling from the boyfriend, who threatened to kill Serita with the gun he had recently obtained, while pointing it directly at her.

The crisis worker tried to build rapport with the terrified girl, asking where her mother was and whether she could be reached by phone. Jasmine replied that her mother had escaped temporarily to a neighbor’s apartment as soon as the boyfriend stormed out of the apartment following a visit from the police, which had occurred a few minutes before Jasmine made her phone call to the Victim Services Agency.

Jasmine gave the worker the neighbor’s phone number, and the worker called Serita there. The neighbor had called the police at 6:45A.M.because

of the yelling and fighting in the nearby apartment. The boyfriend had pre- viously told Serita that if anyone ever called the police, he would kill her. After the police were called by the neighbor, Serita knew that her boyfriend’s violent temper would become even worse. She was terrified to go to a local battered women’s shelter, fearing that he would track her down and kill her. Serita had a sister living in Georgia, who was willing to take her and Jasmine in on a temporary basis. The advantage of staying with her sister was that Serita had never talked to her boyfriend about where her sister lived, telling him just that it was “down South,” and had never mentioned her sister’s last name, which was different from Serita’s. She believed he would never be able to find her if she traveled so far away from New York. The worker needed to quickly coordinate plans with Travelers’ Aid to provide a bus ticket for Serita and her daughter to travel to Georgia that evening. Serita obtained an Order of Protection, and the police took the batterer’s keys to the apartment. For a period of time during the afternoon, the batterer watched the apartment from across the street.

A taxi cab (which had a special arrangement with Victim Services) was called to take Serita and Jasmine to Travelers’ Aid to pick up the bus ticket for her trip to Georgia. The driver needed to wait until the boyfriend left the area before arriving at the apartment. The crisis worker felt that secrecy was necessary to avoid the inevitable confrontation that would have ensued if the boyfriend had seen Serita leaving the apartment with all her luggage.

Georgia, with the batterer unaware of her plans or her intended destination. Serita and Jasmine stayed with Serita’s sister until her Section 8 housing paperwork was transferred from New York to Georgia.

Chapter 3, by Gilbert Greene, Mo-Yee-Lee, Rhonda Trask, and Judy Rheinscheld demonstrates through case illustrations how to tap into and bolster clients’ strengths in crisis intervention. The chapter demonstrates how to integrate Roberts’s seven-stage crisis intervention model with solu- tion-focused treatment in a stepwise manner. The crisis clinician utilizing this integrated strengths approach serves as a catalyst and facilitator for clients discovering their own resources and coping skills. Greene et al. systemati- cally bolster their clients by emphasizing the person’s resilience, inner strengths, and ability to bounce back and continue to grow emotionally. This highly practical overview chapter aptly applies the strengths-based ap- proach to a diverse range of clients in crisis situations.

I firmly believe that crisis intervention which focuses on the client’s inner strengths and resilience, and that seeks partial and full solutions will become the short-term treatment of choice during the first quarter of the twenty-first century.

SUMMARY

It is clear, in reviewing current progress in applying time-limited crisis inter- vention approaches to persons in acute crisis, that we have come a long way in the past decade. Crisis intervention is provided by several hundred volun- tary crisis centers and crisis lines; by most of the 790 community mental health centers and their satellite programs; and by the majority of the 11,000 victim assistance, child abuse, sexual assault, and battered women’s pro- grams available throughout the country. In addition, crisis services are pro- vided at thousands of local hospital emergency rooms, hospital-based emer- gency psychiatric services, suicide prevention centers, crisis nurseries, local United Way–funded information lines, and pastoral counseling services. The crisis services that have proliferated in recent years are often directed toward particular groups, such as rape victims, battered women, adolescent suicide attemptors, victims of school violence as well as students who were in the building but were not directly harmed, separated and divorced individuals, abusive parents, and victims of disasters. The increased development of crisis services and units reflects a growing awareness among public health and mental health administrators of the critical need for community crisis ser- vices.

This handbook provides an up-to-date, comprehensive examination of the crisis model and its application to persons suffering from an acute crisis. Most social workers, clinical psychologists, marital and family therapists, and counselors agree that crisis theory and the crisis intervention approach

provide an extremely useful focus for handling all types of acute crisis. Al- most every distressed person who calls or visits a community mental health center, victim assistance program, rape crisis unit or program, battered women’s shelter, substance abuse treatment program, or suicide prevention program can be viewed as being in some form of crisis. By providing rapid assessments and timely responses, clinicians can formulate effective and eco- nomically feasible plans for time-limited crisis intervention.

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