Application: Comparative Analysis of Individual, Couple, and Family Crises : Solution Essays

As you have learned in previous weeks, the scope of crisis is broad, encompassing everything from natural disasters affecting millions of people to a personal loss affecting a single family, couple, or individual. As a result of this extreme variability, it is helpful to organize different types of crisis situations into categories based on fundamental similarities. For example, some crises can be classified as “individual, couple, and family,” such as the following: PTSD, lethality, sexual assault, partner violence, addiction, and bereavement.

Although these crises share a classification, they are far from identical. In fact, there is as much variability within the category of “individual, couple, and family crises” as there is within the general designation of “crisis.” One of the major areas of potential contrast is breadth of impact. A situation involving partner violence, for example, may be limited in impact to the two parties involved, particularly if the parties conceal it from others. An individual’s suicide, however, may have the most intense impact on the individual’s direct family members, but is likely to affect others outside of this realm as well, such as friends, neighbors, classmates, and/or coworkers.