Crisis intervention has typically been conceptualized as seeking a return of clients to a state of equilibrium. Our work with Hurricane Andrew survivors in south Florida, as part of the Disaster Mental Health Services team of the American Red Cross, has led us to appreciate the importance of several further considerations. In our work, we developed a proactive approach, attempting to recognize and extend clients' preexisting strengths. We offer a number of pragmatic interventions, focusing particularly on children's issues and we draw attention to sensitive multicultural issues.

Individualism and sexism have been identified as important and problematic biases in psychotherapy. The extent to which psychologists use individualist values differentially in their responses to clinical case vignettes describing men and women was examined. Two samples of practicing psychologists (N=229) responded to 14 clinical vignettes by choosing initial hypotheses about the client that reflected either a utilitarian, instrumental (traditionally masculine) perspective or expressive (traditionally feminine) themes. Two sex-of-client manipulations were conducted, one of which resulted in a sex-of-client effect. A loglinear logit analysis of repeated measures conducted with the non-manipulated vignettes indicated a marked preference for the utilitarian form of individualism for males in response to their clinical difficulties, whereas the responses for female clients were more balanced on the utilitarian and expressive alternatives. There was little evidence of a sex-of-respondent effect.