I remember vividly the first time anyone asked me to become involved in a crisis situation. I was an undergraduate at Ohio University, and one of my friends came charging into my room, saying, “Come on, you have to help Jerry! You have to help, come on!” Even then, I intuitively knew that you don’t just stick your nose into every dogfight you happen to come across. The alarm and urgency of my friend, though, was nothing to ignore or take lightly. When I got to Jerry’s room, he was doing nothing. I mean absolutely nothing. He was not talking, he was not looking at anyone, he was not responding when people touched him, he was simply doing nothing, and it was scary. I would like to be able to tell you how clever and effective I was, but the fact is, I really screwed up. I acted scared, then I acted concerned, then I ignored him; then I got angry and went back to my room, figuring, “The hell with it.” For that matter, the guy who came barging in so upset about Jerry handled the situation in about the same way. The next we heard, Jerry had been taken by the emergency squad to the University Health Center. Fortunately for Jerry (and for me as far as that goes), he had one friend who had stayed with him, who had somehow got him to talk a little, and who realized that something had to be done by someone. In Chapter 3 we will talk specifically about our right and responsibility to intervene in crisis situations, and about the criteria for deciding whether or not to intervene. My memory of Jerry tells me, though, that people in crisis need help more that they need to be left alone; that it is better to do too much than not enough, and that just because things sometimes work out on their own does not mean that they always will.

A minister told me about one of his early crisis experiences. A very upset and frightened lady in her middle forties came to his home one evening in real desperation. Her husband was a successful physician in the community; his gambling had started innocently enough with a Tuesday night poker game and an occasional trip to the racetrack. He had gradually started gambling in amounts that far exceeded what he and his family could afford to lose, and the squeeze had come. He had borrowed against his house and everything else he had of value. Over a period of a year or so, his surgical practice had deteriorated because of his preoccupation with gambling and the resulting debts. That afternoon, he and his wife had had a terrible argument over the situation, and she was terrified about what might become of him and the family. “Will you please go talk with him,” was her plea to the minister. “I can’t help him unless he wants help,” was the stock reply. I’ve said the same thing, haven’t you? One of our employees or co-workers, one of our friends or neighbors, a member of our family, or even someone we don’t know very well, wants us to try to help. They want us to become involved in their problem and they ask us to try to talk with someone for them. It is my hope that this book will help you get to the place where you can tell the “dogfights” from the real crisis situations, and that you will be able to intervene effectively when intervention is justified. You will still get a little too involved once in a while, but you will rarely refrain from getting involved when you really should.

I was recently talking with a deputy sheriff and a city policewoman after one of a series of crisis intervention training classes that were part of a more broadly oriented police training school. It surprised me a little to learn how frequently police are called in to respond to emotional and social crises. For many people, the police are their first resource when they are involved in or observe severe arguments or blowups within families, apparent drug reactions by teenagers and young adults, heightened social tension within schools and community groups,