[Family interventions in crisis: a clinical case]

The authors make a clear difference between the traditional pattern of the psychiatric emergency and the interactional and more integrating conceptualization of the crisis' state. In an ecosystemic perspective they chiefly pay attention to the relation context in which the designated patient and his family are living. They make this clear by describing how the admission to the hospital of a "designated patient" has been avoided by the help of an intervention in the crisis' family and how they have been helped in gathering their resources during a critical period of their life-cycle.