On April 20, 2010, a massive explosion killed 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. Survivors of this explosion recounted terrifying near-death experiences and mourned the loss of coworkers and friends who had perished. Shock and grief spread through small coastal communities composed mostly of fishers and oil workers. However, this was…

Police agencies across the country are struggling to respond to significant number of persons with serious mental illness, who are landing on their doorsteps with sometimes tragic consequences. Arguably, the most widely adopted approach, the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) model, is a specialized police-based program designed to improve officers'…

When upset, 15-year-old Peter overreacts, dumping verbal hostility on everyone, even those trying to help. Peter's attempt to see the principal--who was out of the office--led to an emotionally explosive crisis. In this life space crisis intervention (LSCI), staff calmly tried to help Peter clarify distorted reality. But patient questioning raised…

The authors have worked together with the NASP (National Association of School Psychologists) National Emergency Assistance Team (NEAT) for a decade to help coordinate communications around large-scale crisis response efforts. The massive earthquake and tsunami that devastated the northeastern part of Japan and the subsequent response represented…

This report focuses on the reality that the dropout situation is unlikely to improve as long as policy and practice fail to ensure students have a comprehensive system of student and learning supports. To highlight the intervention problem, the emphasis is on first comparing federal practice guidance recommendations for addressing the dropout…

New Zealand is a bicultural nation, founded on the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi by the native Maori and the British Crown. It is also home to people from many countries, cultures and ethnicities. Therefore, culturally-relevant response to crisis events has become a significant aspect of the Ministry of Education's interdisciplinary Traumatic…

Physical interventions for special education students in crisis remains a controversial concept. The first minute of a crisis situation represents the most crucial time to prevent injury or the exacerbation of injury. Although preventing violence and escalation of negative emotions is the first step in crisis management, school staff also must be…

Counselors need to learn how to effectively and respectfully enter into communities hit by disasters and create collaborative partnerships with community members. Using critical consciousness theory, the authors describe a humanistic, culturally responsive approach to disaster response counseling for marginalized individuals and communities and…

As the U.S. population ages, counselors must begin structuring their interactions to meet the unique needs of older adults, especially in the area of crisis intervention. The purposes of this article are to draw attention to the rapidly growing, often disregarded older population and to introduce the Crisis Model for Older Adults (CM-OA), an…

Trauma-related assistance in response to disasters or catastrophes is needed locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally, and the authors argue that there is a necessity for counseling psychologists and counseling psychology programs to incorporate it into their prevention, training, and social justice repertoire. Counseling psychologists…

As cities across the country and globe continue to generate new solutions to a wide variety of vexing problems, sharing information about what works and what doesn't has become more important than ever. Yet, outside of a few prominent policies, the vast majority of successful municipal experiments never reach a national audience or, for that…

Student death on college campuses is a reality that occurs all too often, and dealing with the aftermath of a student's death is something that all higher education administrators must be prepared to address. Given the proliferation of media outlets, breaking news reports, and instant technologies used by students today, news about these deaths…

Red Flag Reclaiming Interventions are used with students who import problems from the home or community and display them in another setting. This article describes how an incident of violence in the community created a crisis in the classroom. A Life Space Crisis Intervention (LSCI) was used as a student learns to communicate about conflicts…

The article relates to the author's former experiences gained during the work with individuals with developmental disabilities at the Association for the Help of Retarded Children, Nassau Chapter in New York State in the United States (US), as well as with autistic children at the Loddon School in Hampshire County in the United Kingdom (UK).…

When conflict between adult and youth arises, each side quickly draws lines in the sand, daring the other person to cross the line. The tendency is to react in ways easiest and most convenient for oneself, rather than to maintain a proactive stance that aggressively meets the needs of the child and employs two of the most important…