Attack changed college mental health systems
The rampage carried out nearly a year ago by a deranged Virginia Tech student who slipped through the mental health system has changed how American colleges reach out to troubled students. Administrators are pushing students harder to get help, looking more aggressively for signs of trouble and urging faculty to speak up when they have concerns. Counselors say the changes are sending even more students their way, which is both welcome and a challenge, given that many still lack the resources to handle their growing workloads. Behind those changes, colleges have edged away in the last year from decades-old practices that made student privacy paramount. Now, they are more likely to err on the side of sharing information -- with the police, for instance, and parents -- if there is any possible threat to community safety. But even some who say the changes are appropriate worry it could discourage students from seeking treatment. Concerns also linger that the response to shooters like Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech and Steven Kazmierczak, who killed five others at Northern Illinois University, has focused excessively on boosting the capacity of campus police to respond to rare, terrible events. Such reforms may be worthwhile, but they don't address how to prevent such a tragedy in the first place. It was last April 16, just after 7 a.m., that Cho killed two students in a Virginia Tech dormitory, the start of a shooting spree that continued in a classroom building and eventually claimed 33 lives, including his own. Cho's behavior and writing had alarmed professors and administrators, as well as the campus police, and he was put through a commitment hearing where he was found to be potentially dangerous. But when an off-campus psychiatrist sent him back to the school for outpatient treatment, there was no follow-up to ensure he got it. People who work every day in the campus mental health field -- counselors, lawyers, advocates and students at colleges around the country -- put the changes they have seen since the Cho shootings into three broad categories. warning bells that had worried Cho's professors. "Now people are wondering, 'Is this something that could be more ominous?"' he said. "'Are we talking about the Stephen Kings of the future or about somebody who's seriously thinking about doing something harmful?"' Mississippi State and the University of Kentucky are among the schools creating teams involving people such as resident advisers, teachers, administrators and campus police to try to identify troubled students. Others, including Virginia Tech, that already used such "care" teams have added another layer to deal with those identified as potentially threatening. "People who have been really depressed and are thinking about hurting themselves, these folks I think are coming to our attention a little bit earlier," said Keith Anderson, staff psychologist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. "Because it's been a kind of national awakening, we have a sense of hope people will refer folks before something gets out of control." The downside is officials may be hypersensitive to any eccentricity. Says Susan Davis, an attorney who works in student affairs at the University of Virginia: "There's no question there's some hysteria and there's some things we don't need to see." That's a problem because counseling centers already had their hands full. A survey last fall by the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors found colleges on average have just one counseling staffer for every 1,941 students. Those ratios could decline given that some colleges are adding staff -- Virginia Tech has added four, with plans for three more -- but in many states the ratios are still well above the nationally recommended guideline of one counselor per 1,500 students. an aggressive legal strategy that gives the school more leeway to contact parents with concerns without students' permission. In Washington, D.C., meanwhile, federal officials are trying to clarify privacy guidelines so faculty won't hesitate to report potential threats. "Nobody's throwing privacy out the window, but we are coming out of an era when individual rights were paramount on college campuses," said Brett Sokolow, who advises colleges on risk management. "What colleges are struggling with now is a better balance of those individual rights and community protections." The big change since the Virginia Tech shootings, legal experts say, is colleges have shed some of their fear of violating the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Many faculty hadn't realized that the law applies only to educational records, not observations of classroom behavior, or that it contains numerous exceptions for potential safety threats. especially against others. "I know that, for many students, it made them feel more stigmatized," Malmon said. "It made them more likely to keep their mental health history silent." |
