CLIENT STRENGTHS AND CRISIS-INTERVENTION - A SOLUTION-FOCUSED APPROACH

A basic tenet of crisis intervention is that a client currently in cri sis is lacking the necessary personal resources and coping mechanisms for adequately meeting the challenge of a precipitating event. The cri sis clinician, therefore, needs to help the client to develop the reso urces and coping skills needed to successfully deal with the crisis si tuation. The ''strengths'' perspective stands in contrast to standard crisis intervention since it views clients as having the necessary res ources and coping skills but is not using them, underusing them, or no t aware of currently using them. The strengths perspective, however, h as not been systematically applied to crisis intervention nor has it b een operationalized sufficiently to provide for specific clinician int erventions. One approach which provides such specific interventions is ''solution-focused therapy.'' However, solution-focused therapy also has not been systematically applied to dealing with crisis situations. This article discusses the relevance of solution-focused therapy to t he strengths perspective and illustrates its use in crisis interventio n.