Issues in Community Couseling
Running head: ISSUES IN COMMUNITY COUNSELING
Issues in Community Crisis Counseling
Oluwakemi Amola
North Carolina Central University
Abstract
Crisis counseling is a time-limited program designed to assist persons affected by trauma, return to their pre-trauma level of functioning. Crisis counselors utilize several techniques to perform these services. This paper offers a clearer understanding of the crisis counseling field and the counselors who conduct it.
In the past twenty years, crisis counseling has evolved into relatively short-term intervention with individuals and groups experiencing psychological trauma due to a traumatic experience. This type of intervention involves classic counseling goals such as: assisting people in understanding their current situation and reactions, assisting in review of options, providing emotional support, and encouraging linkage with other individuals and agencies that may assist the individual (Brock & Lewis, 2001). The aim of the assistance is to help people deal with the current situation in which they may find themselves. It draws upon the assumption that the individual is capable of resuming a productive and fulfilling life following a traumatic experience if given support, assistance, and information at a time and in a manner appropriate to his or her experience, education, developmental stage, and ethnicity (Everly & Flannerly, 1999). The object of most crisis counseling programs is to help people recognize that their emotional reactions are normal, grieve their losses, and to develop coping skills that will allow them to resume their pre-trauma level of functioning. Development of enhanced coping mechanisms and skills are the desired long-term outcomes (Everly & Flannerly, 1999). Description of Crisis Counseling Traditionally, crisis counseling is short-term; it is usually no more than 1 to 3 months. The focus is on a single or recurrent problem
Issues in Community Crisis Counseling
Oluwakemi Amola
North Carolina Central University
Abstract
Crisis counseling is a time-limited program designed to assist persons affected by trauma, return to their pre-trauma level of functioning. Crisis counselors utilize several techniques to perform these services. This paper offers a clearer understanding of the crisis counseling field and the counselors who conduct it.
In the past twenty years, crisis counseling has evolved into relatively short-term intervention with individuals and groups experiencing psychological trauma due to a traumatic experience. This type of intervention involves classic counseling goals such as: assisting people in understanding their current situation and reactions, assisting in review of options, providing emotional support, and encouraging linkage with other individuals and agencies that may assist the individual (Brock & Lewis, 2001). The aim of the assistance is to help people deal with the current situation in which they may find themselves. It draws upon the assumption that the individual is capable of resuming a productive and fulfilling life following a traumatic experience if given support, assistance, and information at a time and in a manner appropriate to his or her experience, education, developmental stage, and ethnicity (Everly & Flannerly, 1999). The object of most crisis counseling programs is to help people recognize that their emotional reactions are normal, grieve their losses, and to develop coping skills that will allow them to resume their pre-trauma level of functioning. Development of enhanced coping mechanisms and skills are the desired long-term outcomes (Everly & Flannerly, 1999). Description of Crisis Counseling Traditionally, crisis counseling is short-term; it is usually no more than 1 to 3 months. The focus is on a single or recurrent problem