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Understanding 6 Types of Crises

There are 6 kinds of crises: 1) Dispositional crises result from a lack of information. 2) Anticipated life transitions are normative crises like marriage or changing jobs. 3) Traumatic stress crises are unexpected, uncontrolled events like assault or sudden illness. 4) Maturational crises occur during life stages and reflect issues like dependency or identity. 5) Psychopathological crises are caused by pre-existing mental health issues. 6) Psychiatric emergencies severely impair functioning and safety. Crises are either developmental due to life stages or situational from internal and external stresses. This classification helps understand crises and determine intervention.

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SHAINA FE RABANERA
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13 views1 page

Understanding 6 Types of Crises

There are 6 kinds of crises: 1) Dispositional crises result from a lack of information. 2) Anticipated life transitions are normative crises like marriage or changing jobs. 3) Traumatic stress crises are unexpected, uncontrolled events like assault or sudden illness. 4) Maturational crises occur during life stages and reflect issues like dependency or identity. 5) Psychopathological crises are caused by pre-existing mental health issues. 6) Psychiatric emergencies severely impair functioning and safety. Crises are either developmental due to life stages or situational from internal and external stresses. This classification helps understand crises and determine intervention.

Uploaded by

SHAINA FE RABANERA
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

6 Kinds of crisis

Taken from Effective Helping by Barbara Okun

1. DISPOSITIONAL CRISES: These crises can ensue from a lack of information,


such as not knowing which job to take, what type of medical referral to seek for a
particular symptom, what one’s options are about living arrangements, whom to
ask for what.

2. ANTICIPATED LIFE TRANSITION: These are normative, developmental crises


that are fairly common in our society. They may result from midlife career
changes, getting married, becoming a parent, divorce, the onset of chronic or
terminal illness, or changing schools.

3. TRAUMATIC STRESS: These crises result from externally imposed stress


situations that are unexpected, uncontrolled, and emotionally overwhelming.
Examples are rape, assault, sudden death of a loved one, sudden loss of job
status, sudden onset of illness, accident, war.

4. MATURATIONAL/DEVELOPMENTAL CRISES: Most of us experience these


general crises as we pass through our life stages. They may reflect issues of
dependency, value conflicts, and sexual identity, or our capacity for emotional
intimacy, our response to authority, or our level of self-discipline. Usually, these
crises surface in relationship patterns or at crucial transition points in our
development. Examples are the repeated loss of jobs because of an inability to
get along with supervisors, the intense homesickness or depression of college
students away from home for the first time, and midlife crises.

5. PSYCHOPATHOLOGICAL CRISES: These are emotional crises precipitated by


pre-existing psychopathology. In other words, one’s psychopathology
significantly impairs or complicates the way one deals with a situation, inflating it
to crisis proportions.

6. PSYCHIATRIC EMERGENCIES: These are crisis situations in which one’s


general functioning is severely impaired and one is rendered incompetent or
unable to maintain responsibility for oneself; in other words, one is dangerous to
oneself and/or others.

As we look at this classification scheme, we see that crises fall into one of two
major categories: they are either developmental, in that they have to do with
growth and passing through various life stages; or they are situational, in that
they are the result of internal and/or external stresses. In addition to helping
us understand the nature of crises, the classification scheme helps us to put
crises in perspective so that we can determine the best means of immediate
crisis intervention.

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