In the CNN news article “What we know about the Fort Lauderdale airport shooting suspect” written by CNN news writer, Ray Sanchez we are able to begin chipping away at the top of the iceberg. So what DO we know? We know that …show more content…
“he had visions all the time”, “argument with his girlfriend leads to charges”, and that he was “hearing voices” and that he was discharged from the armed forces for unsatisfactory performance. It’s no secret that there are numerous cracks within our current mental health system. In Esteban Santiago’s case there are several strategies a crisis worker on the scene could have applied in this real life crisis.
In the unfortunate circumstance let’s assume that the crisis worker was unable to get to the scene before Sanchez started shooting at people. The first of two crisis intervention strategies I would like to evaluate an apply to this case in particular would be creating awareness. We are given the information that Esteban Santiago has had many stressors in his life. Esteban Santiago was a hero, he made it possible for United States citizens sleep safely at night. As we all know going to war can cause adverse effects on an individual. In exploring these underlying problems it is important to evaluate Santiago’s ABCs (affective, state, behavioral functioning, and his cognitive state) and address his psychiatric symptoms (his visions and hearing voices). It is so important for myself as the crisis worker to acknowledge these psychiatric symptoms, so that the client in this case, Esteban Santiago realize that we as the crisis worker are here to help and that we genuinely care about him as a person and his very real problems that he is dealing
with.
The second and most crucial strategy would be providing support. Bleeding off from my first point, it is an unfortunate reality that our current mental health system is in shambles. It is evident in the article that Santiago has dealt with the mental health system before and has not had the most pleasant experience with it. While mental health hospitals are not of the most help to those in need I understand that he may have to do some jail/prison time for killing civilians. However, I would suggest a diversion in which I would after calming Santiago down and getting him back to reality, I would work with local law enforcement on getting him isolated where I know that he will be safe (to himself and to others).
Santiago’s case is definitely not something that would be able to be resolved right away. However, once we know that he no longer poses a threat to himself or others, we can work on rehabilitating him in regards to his PTSD that he has been dealing with since coming back from the war in Iraq. In a system that is already broken, I think it is important to do what you can with the remaining pieces of our mental health system that are still somewhat functional. It’s not ideal, but as long as we try to help Santiago as best as we can than that is all we can do.