Crisis intervention is a type of short-term psychological intervention that helps individuals who are experiencing temporary extreme emotions to recognize, correct, and cope with them. Crisis intervention through negotiation involves the display of empathy, active-listening communication skills, a nonjudgmental attitude, boundary setting, acknowledgment of distorted thinking through reframing, and problem solving. Empathy, the cornerstone of crisis intervention, involves demonstrating listening to the subject and understanding the individual's situation and the emotional reactions to it. Active listening skills are specific communication techniques that are designed to demonstrate understanding, encourage the subject to talk and verbally vent emotions, and build rapport between the individual and the negotiator. A nonjudgmental approach requires conveying acceptance of the person's emotional state without criticism and maintaining neutrality regarding who is to blame for the crisis. Further, an emotional subject can be helped to view himself/herself through the negotiator's reframing and reformatting of negative perceptions into a positive outlook. The final feature of crisis negotiation, problem solving, consists of guiding the subject into collaborative problem solving in which the subject is guided through rational decisionmaking that will resolve the crisis satisfactorily, as well as the particular steps required to implement the plan. 12 Notes