crisis

A crisis (plural: crises, or crisis) may occur on a personal or societal level. It may be a traumatic or stressful change in a person's life, or an unstable and dangerous social situation, in political, social, economic, military affairs, or a large-scale environmental event, especially one involving an impending abrupt change. More loosely, it is a term meaning 'a testing time' or 'emergency event'.

Emergency

Main article: Emergency

An emergency is a situation which poses an immediate risk to health, life, property or environment.^[1] Most emergencies require urgent intervention to prevent a worsening of the situation, although in some situations, mitigation may not be possible and agencies may only be able to offer palliative care for the aftermath.

Emergency response

Forms of emergency intervention include:

• Crisis hotline - for or concerning the emotionally distressed, such as for the depressed or those contemplating suicide.
• Emergency services - public services for responding to immediate threats to life and property.
• Emergency telephone number - 9-1-1 in North America and 1-1-2 in Europe and for GSMs, see the article for other numbers.
• Medical emergency - injury or illness that poses an immediate threat to life.

Suicide crisis

Main article: Suicide crisis

A suicide crisis, suicidal crisis, or potential suicide, is a situation in which a person is attempting to kill himself or is seriously contemplating or planning to do so. It is considered by public safety authorities, medical practice, and emergency services to be a medical emergency, requiring immediate suicide intervention and emergency medical treatment.

Disaster

Main article: Disaster

A disaster (from Middle French désastre, from Old Italian disastro, from the Greek pejorative prefix dis- bad + aster star) is the impact of a natural or man-made hazards that negatively affects society or environment. The word disaster's root is from astrology: this implies that when the stars are in a bad position a bad event will happen.

Poverty-related crisis

Main article: Poverty. See also Charitable organization

Poverty is a condition in which a person or community is deprived of, and or lacks the essentials for a minimum standard of well-being and life. These essentials may be material resources such as food, safe drinking water, and shelter, or they may be social resources such as access to information, education, health care, social status, political power,^[2] or the opportunity to develop meaningful connections with other people in society.^[3] For the individual it is a personal crisis. When poverty afflicts large numbers of people it becomes a social crisis.

Poverty-related crises include:

Homelessness

Main article: Homelessness

Homelessness is the condition in which a person or people lack fixed housing, usually because they cannot afford a regular, safe, and adequate shelter.

Homelessness intervention

Forms of homelessness intervention include:

• Boarding house
• Homeless shelter
• Subsidized housing

Malnutrition

Main articles: Malnutrition and Famine

Malnutrition is the lack of sufficient nutrients to maintain healthy bodily functions and is typically associated with poverty, especially extreme poverty in economically developing countries. It is a common cause of reduced intelligence in parts of the world affected by famine. ^[4]

A famine is a social and economic crisis that is commonly accompanied by widespread malnutrition, starvation, epidemic and increased mortality.

Malnutrition crisis intervention

Forms of malnutrition intervention and prevention on the social level include:

• In developed countries
  • Food bank
  • Organizations combatting hunger
  • Soup kitchen

Unemployment and Underemployment

Main articles: Unemployment and Underemployment

Unemployment is the condition of willing workers lacking jobs or "gainful employment".

In the absence of a job when a person needs one, it can be difficult to meet financial obligations such as purchasing food to feed oneself and one's family, and paying one's bills; failure to make mortgage payments or to pay rent may lead to homelessness through foreclosure or eviction. Being unemployed, and the financial difficulties and loss of health insurance benefits that come with it, may cause malnutrition and illness, and are major sources of mental stress and loss of self-esteem which may lead to depression, which may have a further negative impact on health.

Lacking a job often means lacking social contact with fellow employees, a purpose for many hours of the day, lack of self-esteem, mental stress and illness, and of course, the inability to pay bills and to purchase both necessities and luxuries. The latter is especially serious for those with family obligations, debts, and/or medical costs, where the availability of health insurance is often linked to holding a job.

Unemployment intervention

Main article: Aiding the unemployed

Forms of unemployment intervention and management include:

• Job hunting
• Temporary work
• Unemployment benefit

Economic crisis

Main articles: Economic crisis and Financial crisis

An economic crisis is a sharp transition to a recession. See for example 1994 economic crisis in Mexico, Argentine economic crisis (1999-2002), South American economic crisis of 2002, Economic crisis of Cameroon.

A financial crisis may be a banking crisis or currency crisis.

Environmental crisis

Crises pertaining to the environment include:

Environmental disaster

Main article: Environmental disaster

An environmental disaster is a disaster that is due to human activity and should not be confused with natural disasters (see below). In this case, the impact of humans' alteration of the ecosystem has led to widespread and/or long-lasting consequences. It can include the deaths of animals (including humans) and plant systems, or severe disruption of human life, possibly requiring migration.

Natural disaster

Main article: Natural disaster

A natural disaster is the consequence of a natural hazard (e.g. volcanic eruption, earthquake, landslide) which moves from potential in to an active phase, and as a result affects human activities. Human vulnerability, exacerbated by the lack of planning or lack of appropriate emergency management, leads to financial, structural, and human losses. The resulting loss depends on the capacity of the population to support or resist the disaster, their resilience.^[5] This understanding is concentrated in the formulation: "disasters occur when hazards meet vulnerability".^[6] A natural hazard will hence never result in a natural disaster in areas without vulnerability, e.g. strong earthquakes in uninhabited areas.

For lists of natural disasters, see the list of disasters or the list of deadliest natural disasters.

Endangered species

Main article: Endangered species

An endangered species is a population of an organism which is at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in number, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters. An endangered species is usually a taxonomic species, but may be another evolutionary significant unit. The World Conservation Union (IUCN) has calculated the percentage of endangered species as 40 percent of all organisms based on the sample of species that have been evaluated through 2006.^[7]

International crisis

Main articles: International crisis and Crisis management

For information about crises in the field of study in international relations, see crisis management and international crisis. In this context, a crisis can be loosely defined as a situation where there is a perception of threat, heightened anxiety, expectation of possible violence and the belief that any actions will have far-reaching consequences (Lebow, 7-10).

See also

• Constitutional crisis
• Coup d'état
• Crisis state
• Distress signal
  • Mayday
  • SOS
• Mid-life crisis
• Revolution
• War

References

Further reading

1. Borodzicz, E. P. 2005 'Risk, Crisis and Security Management' John Wileys, Chichester. ISBN 0-470-86704-3
2. Lebow, RN, Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crisis: 1981. The Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 0-8018-2311-0.

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