Crisis Intervention Measures For LGBT and Prevention Strategies

Introduction

Crisis is referred to as unexpected event which results to dangerous and unstable life situation impacting an entire society, individual, community, or group. There are different forms of crisis that can happen in life which include natural crisis such as floods, storms, or wild fires, disease outbreaks, terror, war, and death of parents among others. These crises normally have different impact on life of the victims based on individual coping mechanism. Normally, individuals from special group are normally affected severely by crisis and they can easily seek comfort in drugs and for those who were already in drugs they can easily over use drugs to worsen their condition. In this regard, drugs users from any particular group would need urgent care to prevent them from worsening their drug use situation (James & Gilliland, 2013). This paper focuses on analyzing crisis intervention measures for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender).

Intervention Mechanism

LGBT individuals face a lot of challenges in the society especially where gay marriage is still considered to be illegal and punishable by the law. Although gay marriage has been legalized in all states of America, not all in the society have accepted it. Actually majority of people are against this practice. In this regard, LGBT still experiences a certain degree of hostility, stereotype and stigmatization in the society. Based on this information, LGBT individuals may be affected by crisis severely as compared to others in the society. This is due to the fact that only a few would wish to be associated by them, to share with them or to help them during this time. In this regard they may feel to be more rejected and less important in the society during crisis than any other time of their life. The situation may be worse if these individuals are experiencing loss of their loved ones who always understand them. This situation can easily led them into taking drugs and for those who were using drugs before the crisis, they may tend to depend more on drugs, making the to be highly prone to addition. In this regard, LGBT individuals should be provided with urgent response and crisis intervention measures employed to assist them recover from the crisis trauma (Kelly & Juhnke, 2005).

The best crisis intervention strategy for LGBT individuals would involve transfer of the client from the community where they are known and prejudiced to a place where their sexual orientation is not known or where they are safe. In this regard, LGBT individual in crisis cannot be assisted together with others who despise him or her. They should be taken in into a care center, in addiction center that accept LGBT individuals are accepted and provided with special care or in an isolated place where they cannot be violated. This step should be followed by the employment of any other intervention measure which would assist them recover from the trauma as well as addiction. The best crisis intervention model to apply to assist the client to overcome the crisis blow is the equilibrium model. Normally, individuals in crisis are in a condition of emotional and psychological disequilibrium in which they normal problem solving techniques and coping mechanisms fail to handle their requirements. The equilibrium model goal is to assist individuals recover pre-crisis equilibrium state. Equilibrium model appears to be the most suitable for early intervention when an individual is disoriented, out of control, and unable to make suitable choices. The main goal of stabilizing an individual remains until the person in question regains some coping aptitudes. The model will be used to help the client accept the new normal as part of his or her life. The model will also be used to help the victim to focus in life and to be positive by defining a new way of life after crisis (James & Gilliland, 2013).

Assurance of balance should be followed by drugs intervention. This will be much easier as the client will have overcome the trauma associated with the crisis. In this case, the intervention measures will be based on the kind of drugs one is addicted to. The first drugs intervention strategy will involve the assessment of the patient drug intake situation, type of drugs use, drugs history, and other personal information including education background, medical background, and criminal records among others. The intervention strategy will then focus on helping the client accept that he or she has an addiction problem and he or she needs help. This will be followed by the development of intervention strategy in which the client together with the counselor will develop an intervention schedule. The schedule will cater for individual therapy, group therapy, and pharmaceutics therapy based on the patient condition. This may be done in house or the client may be provided therapy visiting time based on the condition. However assuming that the client was transferred from crisis scene, it may be safer to conduct an in-house intervention for a period which will be determined based on the level of addiction. A discharge will then be allowed after the counselor is sure that the client is free of drugs completely. Measures should be taken to handle any relapse. One of the measures would be scheduling for regular visits as a way of monitoring the client’s condition (Stevens & Smith, 2013).

Ethical and Legal Measures to be Considered

The LGBT individuals are normally subjected into a number of violence cases, prejudice and stereotyping. In this regard, the counselor handling this group of individual must not be homophobic and must learn to respect them and to use inoffensive or discriminative language or words.  Another ethical measure to be considered is privacy. Disclosure of the sexual orientation of the client to others may subject the client to the similar hostility experienced in the crisis situation. In this regard, the counselor will be required to observe a high level of privacy. Isolation will also be necessary in this case when it comes to sleeping rooms. This will be meant to prevent the client from advancing any sexual interest to others knowingly or unknowingly and cause more crises. The possible legal issues to be faced are identification and providing the actual information regarding the client and why the client must be isolated or transferred to a different place. This may conflict the ethical aspect of information privacy but it would be necessary to avoid confusion regarding where about of some other people involved in crisis (Kelly & Juhnke, 2005).

Conclusion

Drug use is quite high among the LGBT group. However, this situation may be worsened by any form of crisis especially in natural crisis while a community is impacted. Based on the negative perception of the society toward LGBT group, they may feel more impacted by such crisis as compared to others. The isolation and tension may be accelerated by the community inability to relate at ease with them during resource sharing in the crisis site. To assist individuals from this group, a counselor should consider separating them from the rest of the community to reduce cases of stereotyping. This will be followed by intervention care to overcome the crisis trauma and later, drugs intervention measures will be employed. This way the client will manage to overcome the drugs and crisis impact in life (Stevens & Smith, 2013).

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