As a faculty or staff member interacting daily with students, you are in an excellent position to recognize struggling or distressed students. In fact, you may be the first person a student reaches out to for help. Your ability to recognize the signs of emotional distress and to make an initial intervention can have a significant impact on the student’s well-being. Listed below are signs to look for as well as tips on how to intervene and speak with students about whom you may be concerned.

What to look for:

In general, there is no “rule of thumb” or simple method to determine students who might be distressed and in need of help. However, here are some things to keep in mind and watch for:

1. Students who ask you for help with personal problems.
2. Students who show increasing dependence on you by, for example, making unusually frequent appointments to see you, or hanging around your office, wanting to talk to you more than the “norm”.
3. Students who have trouble getting along with other students.
4. Complaints from other students.
5. Students who miss class frequently or whose performance has declined.
6. Students who seem to have trouble focusing on a specific topic or who show disorganized thinking or speech.
7. Students whose behavior is disruptive in class.
8. Students who speak about problems sleeping or concentrating. Students who appear labile in mood, tearful, sad.
9. Students who make any reference, however indirect, to suicide or homicide.
10. Students who share with you personal information which causes concern or alarm.

How to Respond:

If you notice signs of distress and decide to intervene out of caring and concern, here are some suggestions:

1. Talk with the student privately to minimize embarrassment and defensiveness.
2. Be hones and direct in what you have observed and what causes you concern.
3. Don’t try to “diagnose” or infer; focus on the specific behavior or words which have caused you concern.
4. Be non-judgmental. Communicate care and compassion, while maintaining boundaries and limits appropriate to student and faculty/staff.
5. Clarify vague, confusing, or disturbing disclosures. Ask “what do you mean by……” in order to have as much knowledge as possible as to what the student feels and thinks.
6. Ask what the student has tried to do to help himself/herself. Ask what the student thinks he/she needs to do.
7. Do not promise confidentiality. Tell the student that you will use the utmost discretion if seeking outside assistance and that you would like the student to partner with you in together thinking about how to proceed. You cannot afford to feel constrained by a promise of confidentiality if a student has shared troubling information and does not want you to do anything with it. This is not fair to you or to the student.
8. Consult confidentially with colleagues or others if you feel that you could benefit from another perspective.

How to Refer:

1. Refer the student to the Broene Counseling Center if:
   
   The problems and requests of the student are beyond your level of competence.
2. There are personality differences that interfere with your ability to work with the student.
3. A student expresses a preference to speak with someone else.

Consider helping the student make an appointment if you think that would be effective.
Communicate to the student your continued concern. Show genuine interest.
After a few days, follow-up with the student on the referral to counseling. This often is very significant to the student in the care and compassion that it communicates.

Confidentiality Concerns

Once you have made a referral, you might want to find out what happened with the student. It is best to do this by making a follow-up contact with the student. If you call the Broene Counseling Center, please be aware that the staff of the Broene Counseling Center are bound by principles of confidentiality as defined by our professions and Michigan law.

With a faculty or staff referral, we will routinely ask the student to sign a release of information at the first appointment in order to make contact with the referral source. A sizeable majority of students have no problem with that, especially when it is explained to them that such action is a courtesy to another person who has acted in a caring manner. Broene staff will then contact the referral source to confirm the follow-up of the student. If no permission is given by the student, no information can be given by the Broene Counseling Center, except in rare cases where the student is judged to be in imminent danger to self or others.

We take information from faculty and staff very seriously and we very much value your input as “partners” in the Calvin community.