Crisis and connection

Psychiatric interventions for crisis care lie at the center of the conflict between involuntary commitment and recovery/wellness systems in mental health services. Though crisis can mean completely different things to people who have the experience, the general public has been convinced by the media that people with psychiatric disabilities are to be feared. More and more this has led to social control but is erroneously still called treatment. This does nothing to help the person and in fact further confuses people already trying to make meaning of their experience. This paper offers a fundamental change in understanding and working with people in psychiatric crises. Rather than objectifying and naming the crisis experience in relation to illness, people can begin to explore the subjective experience of the person in crisis while offering their own subjective reality to the relationship. Out of this shared dynamic in which a greater sense of trust is built, the crisis can be an opportunity to create new meaning, and offer people mutually respectful relationships in which extreme emotional distress no longer has to be pathologized. The authors, who have had personal experience with psychiatric crises, have provided this kind of successful crisis counseling and planning and have designed and implemented peer support alternatives to psychiatric hospitalizations that support this model.