A crisis can be defined as any physical, emotional, or psychological disruption that causes one’s normal means of coping to fail or otherwise proceed under duress or functional impairment (CMH, 2016). Generally, a crisis is the result of a stressful or traumatic event where either a person’s perception of the event results in the aforementioned disruption or a person’s ability to deal with the event is disrupted as a result of their failing coping mechanisms (James, 2008). A crisis intervention, refers to process of responding to a crisis in a manner that minimizes the impact to those involved in and affected by it so that their coping mechanisms are able to quickly readjust (CMH, 2016). Through crisis intervention a stable environment from an individual, group and community level are more quickly regained, and life is able to return to as normal as situation as possible. Since a crisis generally operates in chaos, crisis intervention cannot and should not operate in a similar fashion (Roberts, 2002). Consequently, a crisis intervention must have a plan, model or guidelines to follow or else it may do more harm than help.
In this particular case, the crisis that occurred was a mass shooting at a middle school by a student named John. As the situation was very chaotic in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, the first step of any crisis intervention plan would be to protect and secure the vulnerable, provide medical treatment to the injured, and eliminate the opportunity of any further threats (CMH, 2016). This has been accomplished and what is currently known at the shooting is that there were 19 fatalities in total at the school including John,14 students and three teachers. In addition, five other students were also injured in the shooting. Police report that John’s fathers was also killed at their home prior to his arrival at the school. Now that the immediate danger of death and injury has been removed. The next step in the crisis intervention plan is to attend to the survivors which include the five surviving victims of the shooting; students, teachers and staff that were present at the time of the shooting; the parents of the deceased and injured students, as well as the family and friends of the deceased teachers.
In this phase of crisis intervention, when responding to a person is crisis, any intervention plan must at a minimum include: an assessment of the issues involved in the crisis; a means of responding to or intervening into the issues that have been identified; and a treatment to realign coping mechanisms. However, before any plan can be implemented, the first step is to ensure that there are enough appropriate crisis personnel to staff the plan. The reason for this is that since the shooting occurred at a school and directly involved both students and teachers. Accordingly, as everybody at the school might be a person in crisis, it would be inappropriate to have them run or implement a crisis intervention. Consequently, crisis personnel should be sought from other school and universities, hospitals, volunteer agencies, and professional crisis services. It is important to note, that those chosen to assist in crisis services must either have the knowledge, background or training to provide effective services to the survivors. Otherwise, as mentioned, despite their apparent goodwill, an untrained counselor may do more harm than good in helping survivors resolve any issues that the shooting may have created for them.
Once the appropriate crisis team is established, the next step is helping survivors of the shooting and other affected parties is to conduct a thorough assessment of the emotional and psychological needs (Roberts, 2002). Assessments are necessary because everyone has a different way of coping or not coping with a crisis. Through the assessment crisis workers will be better able to understand where an individual is “hurting” emotionally or psychologically. In essence, the primary purpose of an assessment is to: establish a rapport between the crisis worker and survivor, obtain information about survivor, and identify the major problems confronting the survivor (Roberts, 2002). Such information will be important is developing the appropriate treatment to resolve the crisis. One of the key challenges of the assessment step in this case, is the fact that most of the survivors and affected parties are children. Accordingly, how they are assessed will be different than the assessment process for the teachers and staff (Myer et al., 2002). Consequently, the assessment of the students will most likely require the need of professional assessor with experience working with children (Myer et al., 2002). One of the more promising and effective ways to assess children is using a triage assessment form (TAF) (Myer et al., 2002). The TAFs not only can it be employed relatively quickly and in a non-threatening manner during a crisis or its aftermath, but also the information that is obtained in the forms have proven helpful assisting children towards resolution of the crisis.
Once a thorough assessment is made the next step is helping the survivor manage their immediate feeling and emotions (Egan, 2002). The purpose of this step is to allow the survivor to express their feeling in as open a manner a possible and to “explain their understanding of the crisis, which in this case was a shooting. The survivors should be allowed to talk freely about what they were thinking when the shooting was happening or immediately after the situation was stabilized. The underlying point is to allowing those feeling out in the open so that they can eventually be addressed rather than allowing them to stay hidden and buried in a survivor’ mind. This also helps the survivor to achieve a level of emotional balance. Some ways that this step can be achieved is by connecting survivors to support groups and stress networks that can allow the survivors to find the circumstances and environment that is tailored to their own personality, age, race, or ethnic group. Crisis hotlines are another way to implement this step especially since they can be anonymous and available 24-hours a day, seven days a week.
The fourth step is to begin developing option and ideas that can eventually lead to the resolution of the crisis. Naturally, this is best achieved through interaction between the survivor and the crisis worker. However, as some survivors may not be emotionally stable soon enough after the shooting to deal with this step collaboratively; the crisis worker may need to develop a preliminary spectrum of plans and options independently. While these options, in this case might focus on the individual issues that survivors are confronting, other options can have more macro-level focuses. For example, one of the potential issues in this case was the fact that John was suffering from the abuse of his father and well as bullying from his classmates. Accordingly, one option that could be put forward is the hiring of a school counselor(s) who will focus specifically on anti-bullying and children suffering from domestic violence. While this option might not directly help the survivor exactly, but I could indirectly provide assistance in showing that the school is staking the necessary steps to make sure that the unfortunate situation surrounding John does not lead to other students feeling that they had no other choice (Mishna, 2009).
The fifth and final step of this phase of a crisis intervention is implementing the treatment plan that is deemed the most suitable and effective. In this case, the treatment will not include just one option but rather a range of options that address particular areas of concern of individuals, the school, and the community. For instance, a reasonable treatment plan should include: (1) the establishment of a school crisis team composed of teachers, administrators, staff, and student representative to monitor school events in a manner that provides them with an ability to act proactively to resolve troubling situations before they happen; (2) the hiring of the aforementioned counselor, (3) continuing opportunity for individual and group support and counselling services, (4) a post shooting monitoring mechanism of survivors to determine the existence of post-traumatic stress or suicidal tendencies, and (5) continuing education and training for teachers and staff to help them be aware of at-risk behavior in students that might warrant deeper school involvement.
While the school shooting was a tragic event, the pain and suffering that resulted from it should not be in vain. One way that this can be avoided is to use the grief felt and lesson learned to build a stronger community that is better able to handle the situations that lead to crisis and well as its aftermath.
References
Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA. (CMH). (2008). Responding to Crisis at a School. Retrieved from http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/crisis/crisis.pdf
Egan, G. (2002). The Skilled Helper, 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
James, Richard K. (2008). Crisis Intervention Strategies, 6th ed. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Mishna, Faye. (2009). An Overview of the Evidence on Bullying Prevention and Intervention Programs. Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention, 8:327–341. Retrieved from http://btci.edina.clockss.org/cgi/reprint/8/4/327.pdf
Myer, Rick A. (2002). Trauma and Loss: Research and Intervention. Retrieved from http://assets1.mytrainsite.com/500051/tlcv2n1.pdf
Roberts, A.R. (2002). Assessment, Crisis Intervention and Trauma Treatment: The Integrative ACT Intervention Model. Retrieved from http://btci.edina.clockss.org/cgi/reprint/2/1/1.pdf
