Crisis Intervention Abc's

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Crisis Intervention ABC’s Melissa Tullock 0ctober 23, 2012 Professor Latasha Garner HN 220 Crisis Intervention ABC’s Everyone eventually experiences moments of crisis that might vary in content but tend to share certain characteristics. Crisis usually entails threat, loss, and the unexpected. Different theoretical approaches have been offered for helping those working through crisis. Overall, the most effective approaches tend to follow a brief therapy model that stresses the event isolated from other issues and seeks a plan of action to mitigate the crisis (R. Grice, 2010). The A-B-C method of crisis management consists of three stages: A, achieving contact; B, boiling the problem down to basics; and C, coping (Kanel, 2007 pg. 69). In the first stage, achieving contact, it is essential to build rapport with the client so that they will trust us enough to open up and tell us the whole story. “People don’t care what you know, until they know that you care” (Kanel, 2007 pg. 69).We do this by using basic attending skills. Active listening, calming reassurance, respectful demeanor, empathetic responses, good eye contact and giving appropriate verbal and non-verbal responses as well as being aware of the clients’ non-verbal posture are all necessary to being an effective crisis counselor. At times it will be necessary to ask the client questions, as they may not know what we need to know. Close ended questions will be needed to get information like family size, marital status and medical history. Open ended questions allow us to glean more information from the client in regards to what they have already told us. For example, if a client states
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