Crisis Management is a Crisis in Behavior Analysis - Applied 2022

Abstract This session reframes “crisis management” as a preventable systems problem—not a treatment plan. Drawing on injury statistics, ethical obligations, and field trends, the talk defines crisis as an immediate risk to health/safety and locates it as a last-resort response (Plan Z). We examine common failure points that make crises more likely: missing precursors, over-sanitizing antecedents (losing teachable EOs), treating restraint/PRNs as “interventions,” reinforcing restraint through equipment or attention, failing to analyze restraint data, and ignoring contextual variables. The session then pivots to practical fixes: build a consistent, flexible assessment battery (including self-assessment of competence), adopt trauma-assumed practices, and center a prevent-teach-manage model with the “Big Four” (functional communication, attention-getting, tolerance to delays/denials, and independent play). Evidence for omnibus mands is reviewed. Participants learn to graph/analyze crisis events (type, duration, frequency), debrief and retrain from those data, and redesign environments to make crises rare. Finally, we address supervision culture (ditch “warrior” narratives), burnout and self-care as ethical imperatives, and embed social validity and culturally responsive tools (e.g., CIFAI) so goals, procedures, and outcomes are acceptable—and safer—for clients and stakeholders.