2004 15-4 A Study of Counselors’ Experience in Crisis Intervention On University Campuses
Li-Jung Mai
Shiu-Ling Tsai
Yuan Ze University
National Taiwan Normal University
Crisis intervention is a big challenge for school counselors. It is a critical moment for counselors to present their profession as important to the college. The pu中ose of the study was to explore the professional counselors’ experience in crisis intervention at the university. Six professional counselors were interviewed to understand their personal experience. Qualitative analysis was applied to the collected data. The results of the analysis are as follow:
1. The most notable crisis incidents included: incidents or suicide caused by psy.chological diseases, violence associated with broken relationships, sexual abuse and fear relating to multiple student deaths.
2. To make sure client’s safety and to give emotional support are both important task in crisis intervention. The key point for effective intervention are to be empathy and accept client’s feeling , to be sensitive to client’s need and to deal with, client's willingness to face the problem, and the counselors must have different kinds of abilities. In whole, ideal crisis intervention included four dimensions: releasing the crisis; helping client coping his problem; educating others and having prevention moreover; the ones involved also get care and support.
3, The difficulties in crisis intervention are client’s resistance and defense, counselor’s safety, other workers' emotions and counselor’s profession is not respected or is doubt.
4. Counselors have a lot of burden in the process of crisis intervention. There are pressures from the tension of the crisis event; wrrry about the result; the handling of profession ethics and counselors’ own safety.
5. The influences of the crisis intervention on the counselors are: more emphasis on early prevention; uncertainty over professional identity; increased sensitivity to crisis; improved abilities for crisis management; counselors’ awareness of their own burden and pressure.
According to the results of the study, suggestions for future research and counselors training are also presented.
Keywords counselor, crisis intervention, crisis of university campuses
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