Emotions and crisis management

Emotions are what move us to action. Almost always they have to do with people and what we want from or did not obtain from people. We may get angry at someone because of something he has done or failed to do. We may feel shame in connection with some person because of what we ourselves did or thought.

 There is only a handful of specific emotions: fear, shame, anger, guilt, sadness, joy, sexual desire, grief." Going on to explain how he tries to help, the psychiatrist tells us: "I am interested in what the client is experiencing when he is with me, and I may put it to him just like that: 'I'm curious about what you are experiencing right now.' Then I see how well he is able to discern his own feelings. Most of us have not been taught this skill. 

We have learned how to keep our emotions vague. We have learned all the imprecise words for feelings: tense, nervous, upset, disturbed, bad, frustrated, bothered, agitated, aggravated, overwrought, tired, and lousy, depressed, and so on. "Either the client's present emotions are giving him distress, or the automatic constraint (repression) of these emotions is producing distress of a second order. There is a reduction in distress from both sources when he can acknowledge the constraining actions and put the emotions into thoughts and words.

This starts a benign circle-thought, verbalization, sharing, new perceptions, augmented coping resources-e-replacing the vicious circle of increasing tension and further demoralization." Crisis intervention today is being practiced at most general hospital- that has psychiatric units. It is available through many private psych: artists. There are storefront clinics in many areas, an increasing number of them. Some indication of the value of crisis intervention is to be found ill the experience of Los Angeles County Hospital, which used to admit 95 percent of patients coming in or brought in for emotional disturbances, better than 1,500 a month, and had to send many to mentalinstitutions. 

Now, employing crisis intervention, the hospital help'; 65 percent as outpatients, and the 35 percent admitted stay an average of 5.2 days instead of 180 days as before; very few go to mental institutions.

There is also the experience of San Francisco where the annual commitment rate to state mental institutions dropped from 2,887 to 119 in the first four years in which the city had an expanding complex of emergency treatment centers. 

Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta now treats 5,000 psychiatric emergencies a year in its crisis center; and its 36-bed mental ward, previously inadequate to meet the need, is seldom completely occupied today. Crisis centers are staffed by teams which include nurses, social workers, lay therapists, and clergymen as well as professional psychiatrists. Certainly, crisis intervention is no panacea for all mental illness".It could be important in your life or the life of someone close to you to be aware of the availability of crisis intervention and of the likelihood that it can help in seemingly desperate situations.