Counseling & Psychological Services

Statement on the Role of The Appalachian State University
Counseling and Psychological Services Center
Managing Potentially Dangerous Students

The purpose of this statement from the Counseling and Psychological Services Center Director is to provide information on what our counseling service is doing to manage potentially violent students and to educate media and the general public about what such services and universities cannot do.  All concerned want to ensure the safety of their students, campuses, communities and the world at large.  Therapy and counseling have always been a core method of helping distressed students.  After the tragic and horrific events at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois many campuses started initiatives to help minimize the possibility of more such events involving targeted violence.  One such effort involved the creation of teams with different names such as the Threat Assessment Team, Risk Management Committee, and the Early Intervention Team.  At Appalachian, these three teams are all a part of the Campus Safety Council.  Counseling Center staff serve as consultants in weekly meetings with these groups, usually composed of the Dean of Students, Director of Student Conduct, Director of Disability Services, Police Chief, Director of University Housing, Health Center Director, and other relevant campus partners.  The Early Intervention Team is composed of faculty and staff.  Such committees help "connect the dots" (i.e., gather more complete information about a student from multiple sources) and identify troubled students who may have the potential to go down a path toward violence directed at themselves or others.  Plans are developed to help and support such students when possible, and these plans sometimes include mandated assessments, evaluations or treatment as preconditions to continuing in, or returning to school. Seldom can a clinician make a judgment about someone's stability, dangerousness or threat status in a one hour interview.   Students often describe the events that led to their referral very differently than college officials do, so it is important that releases of information conform to applicable requirements and that proper documentation be required. If you are concerned about a student, please consult the Early Intervention Team, Counseling Center, Dean of Students, or University Police. The Police Department maintains an anonymous reporting site that allows individuals to share any concern related to the safety of the campus community. That site may be accessed at: http://www.police.appstate.edu/crime-tip-submission-form. In addition, the University maintains an Emergency website which may be accessed at http://epo.appstate.edu/.

 Our university has hired a case manager to help the safety committees and also help connect the dots. Our case manager serves as referral coordinator to insure that students follow up with referrals.  She also helps troubled students find and negotiate for the services they need.  Our university has increased psychiatric services for students.  Medication is often needed for more severe mental health issues.  Many surveys and research projects indicate that the severity of pathology and complexity of issues have greatly increased in college student clients in the past two decades.  The demand for counseling services in general has increased as well.  The Counseling Center does preventive psycho-education and outreach for the campus on such topics as suicide, eating disorders, or  trauma, by going into classrooms, fraternities, sororities, residence halls, and club meetings to present.  Counseling center staff often provides training to faculty, staff, and students on identifying troubled and troubling students and on how to refer such at-risk students for the help they need. One of the seemingly invisible services offered by college counselors has involved the increasing amount of time required for consulting with worried parents, faculty and staff regarding students of concern.  The tragic shootings lead concerned professionals, friends and loved ones to seek more information and more assurance.  College counselors attempt to reduce the stigma associated with psychiatric problems and to encourage the use of campus counseling services.  It is also important to realize that the mentally ill are more likely to be on the receiving end of violence than the perpetrator of violence, and to understand that most of those with even serious mental illness are not violent.

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An Adobe Acrobat PDF copy of the complete document resized to fit on two pages of the Statement on the Role of the Appalachian State University Counseling and Psychological Services Center Managing Potentially Dangerous Students is available HERE.