10.1 Crisis and emergency: Understanding crises and emergencies

A Family Guide to Concurrent Disorders - Part III: Treatment

Outline - Chapter 10: Crisis and emergency

• Understanding crises and emergencies
• Whose crisis is it?
• Limit-setting
• Dealing with inappropriate behaviour
• Example of an escalating crisis
• When a crisis becomes an emergency
• Creating an emergency plan
• Creating a crisis plan

Understanding crises and emergencies

Even the best planning can't always prevent a relapse. Sometimes a relapse develops into a crisis. A crisis may also occur with little or no warning.

A crisis is any serious deterioration of a person’s ability to cope with everyday life. It can be a turning point—for better or worse. It does not necessarily involve a danger of serious physical harm. A crisis develops when people feel they cannot control their feelings and behaviour and have trouble coping with the demands of day-to-day life. People in crisis may experience extreme despair, sorrow or anger. They may not be able to sleep, they may hear voices or they may believe that they have superhuman powers. Although people in crisis are not necessarily a danger to themselves or anyone else, in many crisis situations, outside help (the person’s doctor or therapist, a mobile crisis service or crisis line) is needed.

An emergency is a situation in which there is an immediate danger that the person will harm either him- or herself or someone else (Chan & Noone, 2000).

Examples of emergencies:

• threats of suicide
• threats of physical violence
• extreme impaired judgment caused by problems such as psychosis or intoxication.

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