Cokeville Elementary School in Afton, Wyoming, was taken hostage on May 16, 1986. Two self-styled "revolutionaries" held 135 children, 14 teachers, the principal, and 3 other adults confined in a classroom for just over 2 hours. The siege ended violently when one of the perpetrators accidentally killed herself by unintentionally…

In response to the recent suicide epidemic, many school districts have struggled to devise suicide prevention procedures. Smithtown Central School District in St. James, New York developed procedures in 1983 using research data on the warning signs and risk factors relating to the suicidal child. These procedures focus on a multidisciplinary team…

This article is a written version of a workshop on crisis intervention and non-violent restraint. It is geared towards staff responding to crisis calls, and the supervision of crisis intervention in public schools. Reaction to death threats, bomb scares, and weapons are discussed. The NOVA and NEAT principles are briefly integrated into this…

The importance of volunteers in the provision of mental health crisis intervention services has been well documented. However, the volunteer turn-over rate is quite high, due to factors such as burnout. This study examined stressfulness in relationship to caller problems, as well as variables related to perceptions of stress. In this study…

A study analyzed the use of third-party credibility as a deliberate and systematic public relations strategy to regain credibility for an organization faced with public hostility. Four types of third-party usage are: citizen participation, outside investigation, adversarial advocacy, and employee dissemination. Third-party credibility as a public…

This report is an evaluation of the Youth Crisis Center program run by the Wichita, Kansas Children's Service League to provide crisis counseling services to status offenders. Two major objective of the program were to reduce the number of adjudicated status offenders in Sedgwick County, Kansas; and to reduce placement of such youth in locked…

Hotlines, or telephone crisis-lines, begun in the 1960s and currently numbering in the hundreds provide assistance to callers in crisis, frequently around the clock. Crisis-line communication can be seen as a form of mediated therapeutic communication premised on the existence of a crisis and the medium of the telephone which shapes the…

Attributions affect coping with victimization. Battered women who blame their husbands' moods are less likely to leave than are women who blame their husbands' permanent characteristics for the violence. Abused women often have repeated contacts with crisis intervention workers and the attitudes of those workers may affect the attributions made by…

This document presents a program for training volunteers to assist individuals and families who are going through a crisis related to terminal illness and death. The training is described as being both didactic and experiential. A discussion of the didactic portion of the program includes descriptions of: (1) the stages of preparatory grief as…

The shift in mental health delivery systems from a centralized to a decentralized community-based system requires quality service standards from both a professional and a service implementation viewpoint. The present paper sets forth the basic and preliminary structure for standards for crisis outreach services. Definitions are presented which…

Findings of a literature review of school policies and procedures for school-based responses to death-related crises are presented in this paper. A rationale and guidelines for policy development and examples of practices for dealing with death-related incidents--such as suicide, homicide, drug overdose, and accidents--are described. Following an…

The School Crisis Network is an organization founded in Charlottesville, Virginia by a group of practitioners in the community, local mental health agencies, and school personnel to address the needs of local school systems during times of crisis. It represents a unique cooperative effort between mental health professions and the school system…

Crisis intervention type services were initiated in the Battered Women's Shelter in Fayetteville, Arkansas with the purpose of assisting children with their immediate distress and possibly preventing repetition of the violent patterns within families. Services were provided by volunteers or hired staff as funding allowed. The families the shelter…

This paper discusses domestic violence, examining its epidemiology for the general population and for two Asian American groups. It reviews data from 10 empirical studies on domestic violence among Asian American women. Qualitative studies stress the impact of family ties, family honor, and shame; religious values; fear of the legal system; and…

The National Institute of Mental Health reported in 1998 that suicide in the United States is the third leading cause of death among young people, and that they are the only age group whose mortality rate has increased due to suicide during the last 20 years. The United States Territory of Guam has also experienced an increase in adolescent…