The four stages of problem development are presymptomatic, symptomatic, crucial, and acute. This four-stage developmental model is used as a guide to train the police practitioner to recognize the severity of a problem and to formulate appropriate and helpful responses. The model also presents four components of living that are affected by prolonged stress and crisis situations, including psychological, personal-social, physical, and economic. The specific skills the effective helper must develop are perceptual skills, used to judge crisis depth; communication or responding skills, used to guide the crisis victim to a higher level of understanding and commitment to change; and intervention strategies or skills that may be necessary to resolve the problem or crisis. The first chapter outlines techniques for analyzing and understanding approaches for controlling conflict situations. Examples of both effective and ineffective responses are presented. Another chapter examines stress and emotions as reflected in behavior, including family relations and stress, environmental stressors, work role and stress, and psychological and physiological models of stress. Other chapters focus on perceiving and responding to crisis depth and environment. Techniques for responding to the crisis victim's needs are described; these include responses to inappropriate interactions, such as gossip, rumor, excessive complaining, and inappropriate dependency and action, and ways to respond with understanding. Subsequent chapters deal with perceiving and responding to both content and feeling and to nonverbal communications. Multicultural and minority considerations are detailed. Action dimensions of problem solving and the administrative dimensions of conflict management training are also presented. Chapter references, tabular data, and an index are provided. Appendixes contain a vocabulary of affective adjectives, personal data forms (one for psychiatric evaluations, including diagnostic categories), and a form for rating interviews of disputants.