Creating Excellence in Crisis Care

Book excerpt: A Guide to Creating Successful Crisis Care Programs Produced in association with the Life Crisis Institute . . . This new and comprehensive book . . . has made an insightful mark in a challenging and . . . expanding field. Complementing Hoff's classic clinical text, People in Crisis, Creating Excellence in Crisis Care merits serious attention from all people reforming, training, and working in health care. --Antoon A. Leenaars, past president, American Association of Suicidology and the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention In this essential resource the authors show how to prepare crisis care clinicians, practitioners, and volunteers to develop crisis counseling programs that will help raise the health of communities in a cost-effective way. Drawing on the best practices from the United States and Canada, the book is filled with vivid examples that clearly demonstrate how a holistic, interdisciplinary, and collaborative approach is the most practical response to the challenges of working with people in crisis. This comprehensive text offers a field-tested framework and systematic method for including crisis content--critical life events, violence, victimization, suicide, and psychiatric emergencies--in the formal training of health, social work and other human services professionals. The book also describes the criteria for developing crisis counseling programs and practice protocols that address the social, psychological, and medical needs of people in distress.