1. When intervening with clients experiencing emotional distress, ensure your own calm mindset and the client's safety. Assess the severity of distress. 2. Identify the concern by asking questions about feelings, mood, and observing verbal and nonverbal cues. High distress may require emergency referral. 3. Provide immediate intervention to help regulate distress, such as ensuring safety. Once distress reduces, use reflection and validation strategies.

1. EMOTIONAL DISTRESS -
ASSESS AND INTERVENE
Dr. R. Muthukrishnaveni
Assistant Professor of Commerce, Saiva Bhanu Kshatriya College, Aruppukottai

2. PREPARING TO INTERVENE
• Ensure that we are in a calm mind space
• establishing a small ritual for ourselves of breathing deeply for two minutes before
before entering every session
• Have a database for referrals
• With clients whose distress is extremely high, requiring more intensive and long term
term support, we may need to refer to specialized services, including the emergency
emergency department of the nearest hospital

3. IDENTIFYING THE CONCERN
• Emotional distress can be expressed through verbal or non-verbal ways
• Verbally. If the client is able to speak, the following questions might help to elicit
emotional concerns
• (When the client has mentioned a specific incident/event) How are you feeling about X?/
How did that make you feel?
• How has your mood been over the past week? How do you feel most of the time?
• Emotional distress might also be expressed nonverbally
• Silence.
• Crying
• Apparent confusion
• ‘Testing calls’.

4. PROVIDING INTERVENTIONS
1. Immediate Intervention
• When we are working with a client in emotional distress, the first judgment we need to
need to make is: How severe is the distress? If the intensity of distress is high and the
the client is not in a position to process complex verbal statements, our next steps
include:
• Ensuring safety.
• Helping the client to regulate their distress

5. PROVIDING INTERVENTIONS
2.Further Intervention
• Once the intensity of the client’s distress has reduced, the client may be in a position to
position to process verbal statements. Then we can use the following emotion-focused
focused strategies.
• Reflection and labelling
• Emotional validation
• Identifying and reflecting secondary emotions
• Helping the client separate an emotion and a behavioral response

6. REFERRAL AND FOLLOW-UP
• For many clients who present to us in high distress, we may need to refer them to
specialized services or schedule a follow-up call with them (as per our
organizational protocol):
• All clients who present with high distress want (if this is possible) and provided a
contact of an emergency service/helpline they can reach out to if needed.
• We can also let the client or caregiver know that they may need to take the client
to the nearest hospital in case of very high distress that is unmanageable.
• We can refer the client to specialized psychological help. This is not a referral to
a helpline or crisis service but rather a qualified professional or an organization
that provides more long-term psychological help.
• If the client is too distressed, the referral might have to be given to the
companion rather than the client.

7. REFLECT ON OUR WORK
• Supervision Exercise
• All of us have certain beliefs about emotions, determined by our personal histories and
and relationships with significant others. Our own relationship with emotions can
significantly influence how we respond to our clients’ feelings.
• Self-Care Exercise
• some approaches we can use with clients who are in high distress. But such situations
situations can be challenging for us to navigate especially in the sessions