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Abstract
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Since about 1965 we have seen in this country a great proliferation of suicide prevention and crisis intervention services. The "movement," as Louis Dublin liked to call it, is now five years old. It can be stated with certainty that we are at a transition point in this process. We have been through the "era of emergence" - that exciting period when new centers came into being every month. With the current roster of 150-plus programs, we will see the tapering off of new programs, for the rate of development must at least reach a plateau, if not begin a noticeable decline. On the other hand, it can be as safely predicted that things will not assume a static character throughout the field of crisis intervention programming. We are entering the "era of change", and it is now that the great challenge to excellence confronts every service.
There are two factors prompting this period of change. The first is the natural phenomena which must surely set in if an agency is to prove viable and effective. Once established, no program can maintain a status quo attitude toward development. Its personnel will become complacent, its role will become perfunctory, and when this occurs it will soon (hopefully) cease to exist.
Secondly, for the past nine months, a relative handful of suicidologists have been contemplating the new roles and directions which may - or better, should - be developing during the next decade. Very soon the Center for Studies Prevention at NIMH will publish its Task Force Report, "Suicide Prevention in the Seventies." We have every reason to believe that this report will have a significant impact and influence upon the suicide prevention field. The Task Force was well conceived, carefully managed, and the report has been thoughtfully edited by sincere and dedicated suicidologists. We face the prospect that a dynamic force for social change is about to be unleashed for the benefit of the scientific and service oriented community of crisis intervention specialists. At that time, the full range of personnel - lay and professional, scientist and practitioner - and all of the 150-plus service agencies must accept the challenge and address themselves to some very difficult questions of self identity, and of self-satisfaction. We may anticipate that the result will be a period of controlled and planned change in most of the existing service programs.
It is one thing to predict that change is inevitable, and quite another to presume to speculate about the direction that the change might take. Perhaps only a fool would dare to say what direction it should assume...
Language: en |