The April 16 massacre at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University spotlighted gunman Cho Seung-Hui's troubled creative writing. This incident forced college administrators and professors to re-evaluate how to assess students who write alarming papers.
Cho was described by English professors and fellow students as reserved and introverted. The English department at Tech intervened when Cho submitted troubling writings. Now, more than one month after the shootings, the question of where to draw the line between what is disturbing and threatening, imaginative or a cry for help, still goes unanswered.
Bernard Kaplan, an English professor, said although it is important for professors to recognize the signs of mental illness, it is difficult to see the symptoms through students' writing.
"It is very hard to police mental health," Kaplan said. "It is also hard to detect problems in many cases. I had a student years ago who committed suicide, but his behaviors were normal and his writing showed no hint of that or of violence."
The message, he said, is that no one ever knows when tragedy will strike.
Not every piece of writing that contains a self-destructive character indicates the author's mental health. Teachers often encourage their students to write as creatively as possible. However, when the darkness of the writing matches the students' behavior, professors have reason to worry, Kaplan said.
"Young folks often write very violently," he said. "I get concerned when the violence of the prose is matched by odd behaviors. This is what folks noticed at Virginia Tech."
Kaplan said while he has had few problems at the university, the troubled cases he has seen have not been in his fiction writing classes but in literature classes.
"The few cases which most concerned me came in literature classes where students veered off the topic of papers or tests to display worrisome ideas," he said. "In a few of those cases I have had to help the student seek professional help, and those cases were matters of self-destruction, not the destruction of others."
Jennifer Mayer, a psychology professor and director of the psychological services training center, said although writing can be a factor in diagnosing a student's mental health, it is not the only one.
"When an individual is evaluated due to a concern about his or her mental health status, several areas are assessed," Mayer said. "These may include, but are not limited to, a clinical interview in order to understand the areas of concern, physical examination to rule out physical explanations of the problem, a behavioral assessment to understand the problem in particular contexts and psychological testing to gather data about the concerns."
Mayer said only after each aspect of a patient is assessed, including his or her writings, can a counselor fully evaluate him or her.
The Center for Counseling and Student Development works with professors to help them understand when it is appropriate to refer a student and how to approach him or her in a non-threatening way.
John Bishop, associate vice president for counseling and social development at the center, said it is not uncommon for professors to be worried about something a student has written, and the CCSD is available to provide advice.
"Every year the faculty receives a publication that describes how and when referrals might be made to the CCSD," Bishop said. "There is a network of help in place for faculty members to use when concerned about the mental status of a given student and to consider what interventions, if any, seem warranted."
It is difficult to separate entertainment from reality and it is hard to decipher a call for help and a cry for attention. There is no clear way to tell the difference, he said.
"There are some questions that deserve our attention," Bishop said. "Where is the line between writing creatively and 'I am revealing a dark side of my soul to you?' What is truth and what is fiction? If one believes that writing about violent thoughts is cause for alarm, how do we reconcile that with what violent thoughts are acceptable or even entertaining?"
Violence in our society is not easy to explain, Bishop said, but there are no simple answers to the complex issues that the Tech shooting has brought into the public eye.
"Simplistic answers to complex questions are almost always wrong," he said. "Therein is the danger in responding to the Virginia Tech tragedy in a way that suggests there is an easy fix."
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