Suchergebnisse

Abstract: Background: Crisis helplines aim to provide a short-term intervention or guide users to professional mental health services, but many users return to helplines despite having professional mental health contacts. Aims: To contribute knowledge on users' perspectives on the role of crisis helplines in relation to their professional mental health contacts, we aimed to investigate how online helpline users describe such services. Methods: We used thematic analysis of 100 naturally occurring interactions from a Swedish online crisis helpline. Results: The users viewed the helpline as a safe space, a partner, or an alternative to bad professional services. Users oriented to ongoing helpline usage as crucial for their well-being while they described using professional mental health services to be able to stay alive. Limitations: The findings are limited to the nature of the different themes. Conclusion: The view on crisis helplines as a short-term intervention relies on an idealized view on crisis intervention that does not represent users' views. User control is at the core of the appeal of helplines, but it is also a key challenge for organizations and volunteers.

Abstract. Background: At times, the question for meaning comes to nothing and a crisis of meaning ensues. This state is very painful, but difficult to account. Both those who suffer from it and care professionals find themselves at a loss for words. Aims: This study introduces an operationalization of a crisis of meaning. It aims to distinguish the concept from depression, and to investigate whether a crisis of meaning can explain suicidality beyond the known protective and risk factors self-esteem, family functioning, life-event load, and depression. Method: Final-year school pupils in Ecuador (N = 300) completed questionnaires assessing the above variables. Data were analyzed using chi-square, hierarchic multiple regression, serial mediation, and moderator analyses. Results: Crisis of meaning was distinguished from depression. It explained a significant amount of variance in suicidality beyond the mentioned protective and risk factors. For males, crisis of meaning was the only significant risk factor, and the strongest predictor overall. The acute risk factors depression and crisis of meaning mediated the effects of the baseline factors self-esteem, family functioning, and life-event load on suicidality. Limitations: The study was cross-sectional; assessed factors predicted variance in suicidal thoughts, plans, and past suicide attempts, while their relevance cannot be generalized to actual future suicide attempts. Conclusion: A crisis of meaning is an important factor to take into account in further research on the prevention and treatment of people at risk of suicide.

We are submitting a proposal to the City of Missoula that details our plan on providing additional support for the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT), through the implementation of two data collectors. Through working with the program QUEST (Questions for Undergraduates Exploring Social Topics), we researched the issue of drug addiction in Missoula. This research included meeting with government officials who were previously tasked with leading the CIT, utilizing information from various accredited databases, and consulting expert faculty members at the University of Montana. The Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) is a nationally adopted program intended to improve first responder interactions in many mental health and addiction based crises. The CIT has demonstrated efficacy in keeping those with mental illnesses and drug abuse issues out of jail and into more treatment based curriculums. In January 2020, the City of Missoula accepted a grant that created a full-time director position to lead the CIT. Until this point, it was solely run by volunteers. Although this is a step in the right direction, there is a lack of foundational support for this single position. The purpose of the data collectors would be to both support the new director, and to collect essential data that can potentially be used to expose the CIT to more funding. Data collection in other locations has revealed the capability of CIT to aid addiction and mental health crises, and we want data from Missoula to reflect this national standard.

Abstract: Background: While crisis intervention frameworks have indicated the importance of clients in suicidal crisis better understanding their distress to decrease suicidality, it is unclear how clients in suicidal crisis process their distress. Aims: To develop (Study 1) and validate (Study 2) a sequential distress-processing model for clients in suicidal crisis. Methods: Applying task analysis, Study 1 consisted of three phases, which resulted in a theoretically and empirically informed model. In Study 2, we examined the distress-processing model's validity using a longitudinal design. In both studies, data were online crisis chats with adults in suicidal crisis. Results: In Study 1, we developed a sequential five-stage distress-processing model: (Stage 1) unengaged with distress, (Stage 2) distress awareness, (Stage 3) distress clarity, (Stage 4) distress insight, and (Stage 5) applying distress insight. In Study 2, the model's validity was supported via evidence that (H1) progression through the processing stages was sequential and (H2) clients with good outcomes had greater progression in their processing than clients with poor outcomes. Limitation: Clients who were suicidal but did not disclose their suicidality were not included. Conclusion: Our findings provide a framework for conceptualizing and operationalizing how clients move through suicidal crises, which can facilitate intervention and research developments.

Alexander George made a seminal contribution to theories of preventive diplomacy, crisis management, deterrence, and coercive diplomacy. Although he made his contribution in the highly structured environment of the Cold War, his analysis of the close connections between positive and negative inducements, the importance of interests in shaping outcomes, and the dangers of threat‐based strategies as substitutes for policy speaks to the central challenges of contemporary global politics.

Crises and interventions often generate opportunities for profitable business activities. This can have a significant effect on the outcomes of interventions. This article explores how economic interests can create crises and how the nature of interventions may be shaped by business interests. It looks further at the macroeconomic consequences of crises, the possibilities of corruption and neo-imperialism. Reference is made to examples of crises and interventions that illustrate these political economic concerns.

Relativ schwache ethnische Gruppen mobilisieren und rebellieren gegen ihre Regierungen genau so häufig (oder selten) wie stärkere. Jedoch ist dieses scheinbar irrationale Verhalten nicht inkonsistent mit einem rationalistische Ansatz zu ethnischen Separatismus. Ein Verhandlungsmodell, dass all relevanten Akteure als Spieler behandelt legt nahe, dass Machtdisparitäten zwischen einer ethischen Minorität und dem Staat - einschliesslich solcher, die auf dem Zugang der Gruppe zur Intervention Dritterberuhen - die Behandlung der Gruppe durch den Staat beeinflussen sollte, jedoch nicht die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass die Gruppe gegen den Staat rebelliert. Grössere Ungleichbehandlung der Gruppe sollte nicht mit einer höheren externen Intervention zugunsten der Gruppe korreliert sein. Neue empirische Unterstützung des Modells wird vom Minorities at Risk Datensatz bezogen, und die Diskussion hat Implikationen für das Feld der Internationalen Beziehungen jenseits ethnischer Konflikte bis zur erweiterten Abschreckung im Allgemeinen. (SWP-Jns)

Background: Suicide in older people is a significant public health issue with a predicted future increase. Contemporary research directs considerable attention toward physical, mental, and social risk factors that contribute to suicidality in older people; still, little is understood about the fundamental meanings that older people in suicidal crisis attribute to these factors. Aims: The aim of this qualitative study was to describe, analyze, and compare counselors' and older peoples' perceptions of the suicidal crisis during an emergency telephone conversation. Methods: Data collection consisted of individual interviews with telephone counselors (N = 7) working within an emergency mental health triage service, and listening to telephone calls (N = 14) received by the service responding to people aged 65 years and over in suicidal crisis. Triangulation of the two data sets resulted in the emergence of three key themes. Results: We found (1) congruence in the way risk factors were perceived by counselors and communicated during telephone conversations, (2) dissension between counselors' perceptions of end-of-life issues and older people's feelings of ambivalence about wanting to die and not knowing what to do and (3) the need for working side-by-side with the older person, exploring acute changes and immediate capacity for change. Conclusions: An explicit focus on risk factors alone may preclude counselors from gaining a deeper understanding of suicidal crisis in an older person's life. This research has begun to capture and illuminate how telephone counselors can deliver effective crisis intervention as older people struggle and make meaning through their suffering.

Telephone crisis lines offer an important service to individuals in crisis. The accessibility as well as a lack of other means of support leads many individuals to call the line. The role of the volunteer is to listen and support the caller as well as provide information and referrals to other agencies. Agencies are presented with a high turnover of volunteers and are then faced with the task of recruiting and training replacements. Volunteers are often exposed to horrific accounts of human pain and suffering which may affect their personal thoughts, feelings, beliefs and actions and influence the decision to quit. Compassion fatigue is one term used for this inherent "cost of caring." Many factors contribute to this cost including the nature of crisis calls, the repeat caller, and personal coping mechanisms. Educating and debriefing the volunteer are two strategies that may prevent the onset of compassion fatigue and volunteer resignation. Debriefing is viewed as an effective strategy for volunteers as it has been found to be successful in assisting other helpers in many different contexts to cope and deal with the traumatic events that they experience or hear about.