• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Protecting Student Rights and Students a Balancing Act

Posted on: Thursday, 19 April 2007, 06:00 CDT

By Marilyn Elias and Mary Beth Marklein

As more emotionally disturbed youths than ever attend college, campus officials say they're trying to keep students safe despite tough laws that limit college employees' power over students' lives.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) gives students with mental health problems the right to be at colleges unless they disrupt the academic environment.

"You can't force a person to get mental health treatment unless you can determine that he is a risk to himself or to others," says Joetta Carr, professor and licensed psychologist at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Mich. She praises the ADA for protecting student rights, but says it's "a really tricky balance to navigate. You see a disturbed student who clearly has psychiatric problems, you urge him to get help, and then you urge him to take his medication, but you can't always be sure he's complying with that."

Rules in most states require therapists to disclose a patient's problems if the patient or others are in clear or imminent danger. Virginia is one of the few states that don't have such a rule.

Even so, plenty of troubled college kids aren't such a clear threat. Expressing dark thoughts and acting weird isn't enough, says Sheldon Steinbach, a higher education lawyer with the private Dow Lohnes law firm in Washington, D.C. "If we decided to eliminate from campus all people who were considered loners or exhibited unconventional behavior, many creative and talented people would be missing from the campus," he says.

In the last decade, due in part to medication and greater parental awareness, many more students with serious mental illness are arriving on campuses.

"Anybody involved in the college mental health field will tell you that," says Michael Malmon-Berg, staff psychologist at the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio.

The rate of college students ever diagnosed with depression reached 15% in 2006, up from 10% in 2000, according to an annual survey by the American College Health Association. "They're on medication, but then the stresses of college life overwhelm them, and their issues flare up again, so they need help," says Chris Brownson, director of the college counseling center at the University of Texas in Austin.

So what options do colleges have with a clearly dangerous student?

Schools vary in their ability to remove students from campus if they refuse counseling or need to be hospitalized but won't voluntarily leave, says psychologist Keith Anderson, a counselor at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. Private schools frequently have student codes of conduct that may give colleges the right to send students home "temporarily or longer" on medical leave, he says. Public colleges sometimes do this as well, Anderson adds.

Students often come in voluntarily for counseling because friends, dorm resident assistants (RAs) or professors suggest it, says Elizabeth Gong-Guy, director of student psychological services at UCLA.

Women seek help more often than men, says psychiatrist Martin Greenberg, who counsels students at San Diego State University. Asian students are least likely to seek therapy, says Gregory Eells, director of counseling and psychological services at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. "Their culture doesn't support this."

Colleges may try to persuade a student to do the safe thing by offering limited options. At UCLA, professors or RAs contact the dean of students if they're really concerned about a youth, Gong-Guy says.

The dean may offer a student the option of being evaluated and getting treatment or voluntarily withdrawing. These choices are usually accepted by students. "Someone who's dangerous, that's really rare," she adds.

Sometimes the college structure works against itself.

Peter Lake, professor of law at Stetson University College of Law, St. Petersburg, Fla., says campuses aren't set up like businesses. "They're much more compartmentalized, and as a result the information transfer doesn't happen as quickly as it could happen at, say, IBM. Information is not collated or acted up on quickly way." Lake believes college presidents will now appoint someone to head violence prevention task forces.

The lesson from Virginia Tech is clear, says Kevin Kruger of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators in Washington. "We're going to do more of what we are already doing, and it still may not be enough." (c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

More News in this Category