The recent arrest of a UCLA student in the brutal stabbing of a classmate in a campus chemistry lab has again focused attention on an issue that gripped the nation after the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech: the mental health of troubled college students.
The Virginia Tech shootings, which left 32 victims and the gunman dead, raised difficult questions about how a disturbed student could have been allowed to remain at the school despite danger signs.
Since then, campuses in California and around the country say they watch their students ever more closely for signs of possible mental illness or other problems. They have set up teams of counselors, police and administrators to screen reports about potentially troubled students and to discuss treatment or discipline. And many colleges are prepared to act more quickly than in the past, particularly if there is any explicit warning of violence, college mental health and other experts say.
The Virginia Tech killings were followed last year by a deadly attack at Northern Illinois University, in which a former graduate student killed five students and himself.
Since the two incidents, "campuses are more on guard and aggressive about these issues," said Brian Van Brunt, president-elect of the American College Counseling Assn.
Many colleges now require a mental health assessment for a troubled student to stay enrolled and more readily expel those who refuse to comply, said Van Brunt, who heads the counseling center at Western Kentucky University.
But the road to identifying troubled students and treating them or intervening is less clear-cut when there is no threat or hint of violence against themselves or others, he and other college counselors said. Although campus safety is the first concern, civil liberties and privacy also must be safeguarded as more students with mental health problems attend college than in the past, they emphasized.
Such tensions are expected to be explored in legal proceedings against Damon Thompson, the UCLA student who allegedly slashed the throat of a 20-year-old female student in a lab Oct. 8. The woman was hospitalized for 10 days and released in good condition, officials said. Thompson, who has pleaded not guilty to an attempted murder charge and is being held on $3-million bail, had no previous criminal record or complaints against him, campus police reported.
