Crisis states of Helpline subscribers: issues of diagnosis and psychological care

• Main Authors: G.S. Bannikov, A.V. Ermolaeva
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Moscow State University of Psychology and Education 2014-08-01
• Series: Психологическая наука и образование (2007. Online)
• Subjects: crisis state; helpline; pre-suicidal state; crisis state profile
• Online Access: http://psyedu.ru/files/articles/psyedu_ru_2013_4_Bannikov_Ermolareva.pdf

In recent years, the number of calls to the Helpline from people who are in crisis state, often with suicidal tendencies, has increased significantly. It is therefore particularly important that a helpline counselor had instant recognition skills of crisis state and the ability to quickly build a strategy for crisis counseling. The study described in the article was focused on crisis state structure of helpline subscribers using developed “Crisis state maps”. The subject of the study was the critical state of the individual subscribers seeking psychological help. We tested the assumption that the strategies and methods of psychological assistance are directly related to the features of crisis. We studied crisis state in 70 subscribers. Of these, 59 were females (12 to 66 years old) and 11 males (11 to 40 years old). The average age of women was 34,5 years, of men – 23,4 years. The overall average age was 28,65 years. The study result was the portrait of typical helpline subscriber personality. We show the possible strategies of counseling