College Officials Re-evaluate Handling of Troubled Students

RAY SUAREZ:

Can anyone know when a troubled student might become violent? If so, what should be done? And who decides?

For those questions and more, we turn to three people who deal closely with these issues. Bob Portnoy is director of counseling and psychological services at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. Dr. Paramjit Joshi is chief of psychiatry at Children's National Medical Center in Washington. And Adam Garcia is chief of police for the University of Nevada at Reno and joins us from there.

Bob Portnoy, the picture that's filling in after the fact is one of a very troubled man at Virginia Tech. How does someone come to your attention in the first place? What are the normal circumstances?

BOB PORTNOY, University of Nebraska, Lincoln: Well, typically, an individual will come voluntarily. They are aware of our services. They may be troubled and will contact us by telephone or walk in, and we'll be able to see them immediately, if it's an emergency, or alternatively we're able to set up a time within the next day or two where they can be seen for an initial evaluation.

There are a lot of other avenues, though, for gaining access to services. And what's particularly relevant here in our discussion is that there are a number of students who come to the attention of faculty or staff across campus, may present some concerning behavior, and, as a consequence, we'll get a phone call from one of those faculty or staff members asking us to help them to evaluate the situation and whether some intervention might be in order.

RAY SUAREZ:

Do you encourage those kinds of phone calls? Or do you worry that people might be getting turned in for being different?

BOB PORTNOY:

No, we don't discourage that in any way. In fact, we very actively encourage that. A number of years ago, we developed a brochure called "Recognizing and Assisting the Troubled Student," specifically for purposes of talking with our faculty and staff about how to recognize when things are of concern.

And we encourage our faculty and staff not to rely upon their own expertise, which may not be in the mental health realm. And, therefore, we very strongly encourage them to give us a call. We'll talk them through that.

We may encourage them to meet with the student to discuss this further. If they're not feeling safe to do that, certainly we can involve our campus police, possibly even in undercover.

But we provide lots of support to our faculty and staff through counseling and psychological services, the program that I direct, and we find that faculty are really appreciative, as are staff, of that sort of backup. It's really been critical for them to feel safe and feel that they can provide a safe environment for the rest of our students.