What counts as a crisis?

A request is a crisis when the student's message trips the crisis signal list: phrases that indicate danger to themselves (self-harm or suicide) or to others (threats toward people or the institution). It is not a judgement you have to make in the moment; the system flags it.

It's detected, not assigned

Detection runs twice: in the student app as the message is typed, and again on our server when it is sent. The server has the final say and can only escalate, never downgrade. So a crisis is caught even if the student's app missed it or the priority was tampered with.

That is why you should trust the crisis flag. If a ticket is marked crisis, it met a real threshold, and it pins to the top of your inbox for that reason.

Crisis versus urgent versus normal

• Normal is the default: a help request that needs a timely, human reply.
• Urgent is used internally for triage of requests that need faster attention but did not trip a crisis signal.
• Crisis is the danger threshold, and the only level that pages people in real time across email, Slack, and SMS.

What it means for you

When a crisis lands, the student is already being shown immediate-support resources in the app. Your job is the human follow-through: acknowledge the ticket so the team sees it is handled, then follow your institution's crisis procedure. The full path is in What fires when a crisis is detected.