Ministers-both clergy and lay-are often the first recourse for people in crisis, and people expect them to navigate through emergency, tragedy, disaster, loss. Often these persons are paralyzed and they expect help to get in motion again. Crisis Counseling is written for persons who seek to provide such assistance, whether as ministers or hotline volunteers or pastoral counselors. Here, Howard W. Stone unites the historic skills of pastoral care and counseling with the recent methods of crisis intervention from the fields of psychology and psychotherapy. The insights of marriage and family systems also have been incorporated into this book, even though crisis intervention arose out of individual psychotherapeutic theory and practice. This thoroughly revised book includes new material on suicide, working with the family of Alzheimer patients, crisis counseling by telephone, intervention in volatile or hazardous situations, and the minister's personal safety.