Crisis Intervention and Psychiatric Emergencies at the Emergency Room of General Hospitals: Which Minimal Model?

Crisis Intervention Models in the French-Speaking Countries

“…Crisis intervention is a means of approaching any new request for psychiatric care in which the institutional tool is a brief therapy center (BTC) or a specialized inpatient crisis unit (De Clercq, 1997) which can call on the services of a multidisciplinary team (psychiatrists, psychotherapists, psychiatric nurses, and social workers) specifically geared to handle crisis intervention (De Clercq, 1998). When a major psychiatric crisis occurs, the patient or, more frequently, the patient's family turn to psychiatry in search of immediate help, sometimes expecting the problem to be “solved,” as it were, by a wave of a magic wand.…”

“…The aim is to go beyond the analysis of the single symptom which initially comes to the fore so as to specify its function within the context of the family or group environment, to define its place in the history of the patient, and thus to ascertain the nature of the current crisis, which more often than not has produced the urgent symptom (De Clercq, 1990c). During this crisis interaction phase, the various teams attempt to create an initial therapeutic space by putting together a dynamic assessment of the patient with a view toward targeting the treatment and negotiating with the patient a minimum interaction contract involving the patient and his/her immediate familiars (De Clercq, 1997).…”