A crisis (plural: crises) may occur on a personal or societal level. It may be a traumatic or stressful change in a person's life, or an unstable and dangerous social situation, in political, social, economic, military affairs, or a large-scale environmental event, especially one involving an impending abrupt change. More loosely, it is a term meaning 'a testing time' or 'emergency event'.

Poverty-related crisis

Main article: Poverty. See also Charitable organization

Poverty is a condition in which a person or community is deprived of, and or lacks the essentials for a minimum standard of well-being and life. These essentials may be material resources such as food, safe drinking water, and shelter, or they may be social resources such as access to information, education, health care, social status, political power, or the opportunity to develop meaningful connections with other people in society. For the individual it is a personal crisis. When poverty afflicts large numbers of people it becomes a social crisis.

Poverty-related crises include:

Malnutrition is the lack of sufficient nutrients to maintain healthy bodily functions and is typically associated with poverty, especially extreme poverty in economically developing countries. It is a common cause of reduced intelligence in parts of the world affected by famine.

A famine is a social and economic crisis that is commonly accompanied by widespread malnutrition, starvation, epidemic and increased mortality.

Malnutrition crisis intervention

Forms of malnutrition intervention and prevention on the social level include:

• In developed countries
• Food bank
• Soup kitchen

Unemployment and Underemployment

main: Underemployment

Unemployment is the condition of willing workers lacking jobs or "gainful employment".

In the absence of a job when a person needs one, it can be difficult to meet financial obligations such as purchasing food to feed oneself and one's family, and paying one's bills; failure to make mortgage payments or to pay rent may lead to homelessness through foreclosure or eviction. Being unemployed, and the financial difficulties and loss of health insurance benefits that come with it, may cause malnutrition and illness, and are major sources of mental stress and loss of self-esteem which may lead to depression, which may have a further negative impact on health.

Lacking a job often means lacking social contact with fellow employees, a purpose for many hours of the day, lack of self-esteem, mental stress and illness, and of course, the inability to pay bills and to purchase both necessities and luxuries. The latter is especially serious for those with family obligations, debts, and/or medical costs, where the availability of health insurance is often linked to holding a job.