The Miami Hurricane on the University of Miami Counseling Center:
After it became public that Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho had been diagnosed with severe anxiety disorder before going on a shooting rampage, several universities looked into training faculty and administrators to monitor student behavior.
Although UM faculty members do not go through any formal training, Counseling Center Director Pamela Deroian, a licensed psychologist with a doctorate, said she encourages faculty members to notify her of “irregular student behavior.”
“Faculty have a different vantage point of what goes on with students,” said Deroian, who has been with the counseling center for 17 years and became director in June. “We’ve focused a lot on the English Department, specifically creative writing, and I’ve gotten calls from professors about several things to look into.”
Yes let’s do, let’s look into several things, beginning with Deroian, who, as a psychologist, holds the defacto privileged point of view, against which no mere English teacher can begin to compare, it being “different” from hers and therefore easily dismissed. The implicit question she’s avoiding is this — who better to teach us what makes people tick, the author of literature or experimental research?
Exhibit A:
Carson McCullers, American writer of novels and stories that depict the inner lives of lonely people.
Exhibit: n:
BF Skinner, highly influential American psychologist, abandoned English literature to raise his daughter in a pineboard box.
About which she says, in her father’s defense:
My early childhood, it’s true, was certainly unusual – but I was far from unloved. I was a much cuddled baby. Call it what you will, the “aircrib” ,”baby box”, “heir conditioner” (not my father’s term) was a wonderful alternative to the cage-like cot. [!!!] My father’s intentions were simple, and based on removing what he and my mother saw as the worst aspects of a baby’s typical sleeping arrangements: clothes, sheets and blankets. These not only have to be washed, but they restrict arm and leg movement and are a highly imperfect method of keeping a baby comfortable. My mother was happy. She had to give me fewer baths and of course had fewer clothes and blankets to wash, so allowing her more time to enjoy her baby.
Back to the University of Miami, where Counseling Center Director Pamela Deroian, a licensed psychologist with a doctorate is busy
in the process of writing policy guidelines for the Counseling Center because there currently are none. Some other universities, such as Tulane and Emory, use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as guidelines.
Although involuntary hospitalization never happens outside the psychiatric system (except in case of unconsciousness or the inability to communicate), all states, including Florida, have “mental hygiene” statutes authorizing involuntary holds for psychiatric examinations. Florida’s law is known as the Baker Act. Under it, 25 UM students were hauled off to the psych unit last year on the word of a mental health professional:
One student, a junior who lives off-campus, said he was committed to Mercy Hospital for one night his freshman year in spring 2006. The student said he was no risk to himself and recalls saying he loved life while at the counseling center, but he thinks his disheveled appearance was the reason he was sent to the hospital.
“He sought help by professionals, but they didn’t help,” said his mother, who went to the hospital that night to see her son. “Instead it cost us thousands of dollars, aggravation and maybe even humiliation for [student's name]. I wish I hadn’t been reminded of this horrible incident. There was a huge lack of human warmth.”
Patricia A. Whitely, vice president for Student Affairs, said the university errs on the side of caution when using the Baker Act, especially after Virginia Tech.
“If my staff determines a student needs to be Baker Acted then that’s the decision they will make.”
“I know that sometimes we look like the bad guys, but everything we do is in the best interest of the student.”
So there you have it. The design:
And the Vantage Point.
the idea that students’ creative writing efforts should now be scrutinized for clues indicating possible dangerous behavior is so sad and disturbing, i feel like crying. here is another short-sighted, knee-jerk, and deeply irrational approach to the national imperative to “keep us all safe” while caging and repressing us. i can think of a host of eminent writers whose efforts would set off loud alarm bells in the traumatized post-seung-hui-cho community: amiri baraka, james ellroy, allen ginsburg, william burroughs, sylvia plath, richard wright, eugene o’neill come to mind just off the top of my head…
what university counseling centers should do is create welcoming environments in which students feel free to disclose personal pain and anguish without fear of being locked up, booted out, or otherwise singled out for special treatment.
for the sake of democracy, the arts, and all that is good and worthwhile in the world, i hope that university counselors and administrators everywhere can retain knowledge of the distinction between creative expressions of negative feelings (including anger, frustration, and dissent) and the will to cause physical harm to other people.
“My mother was happy. She had to give me fewer baths and of course had fewer clothes and blankets to wash, so allowing her more time to enjoy her baby.” W.T.F. is all I can say.
Policing writing? I could maybe understand that a teacher would feel troubled if, say, a student wrote about chopping up bodies and ritual rape, but that’s not really the case with anxiety disorders. Or am I mistaken?
Should Sylvia Plath have been arrested for writing The Bell Jar? I mean, can we treat this as a real preventive measure?
Skinner’s pineboard box leaves me speechless. Who’s ‘healthy’ here?
Mark, good to see you old friend, since it seems pissing off psychiatric survivors is now my life’s work, thanks for your input, this is something we can agree on.
Januaries, welcome and yes, I wonder about the masters too, how mental health professionals can reconcile Nabakov’s Lolita, and Henry Miller, who’s retrospective was just in all the news, what goes through their heads when they think about these works and the craxy genius behind them?
ama, I share your fears; the Arts have always been the “hands off” sphere, and once they get hip to fact that they’re the next target, American artists will rise up and lead the way. I believe that.
“pissing off psychiatric survivors”. You? I have been doing that also in my recent posts, writing they were/are never mentally ill, just physically ill then convinced by psychiatry to be mentally ill. Maybe I didn’t explain myself in my writing well enough.
Telling people they’ve been duped by psychiatry is disrespectful and will invite pushback. Why not let people work out their own identities?
Because it is a crime against humanity?
Huh.
I think behaviourism “works” but what it produces is highly undesirable. It produces people who are unable to reflect upon the moral value of their actions. It produces easily manageable sheep who seek pleasure and avoid pain. But a human being who has been properly conditioned to reflect upon the nature of their actions will often prefer to seek pain and avoid pleasure, for the sake of what it truly worth preserving in humanity.
Cf. Nietzsche’s Master versus Slave moralities.
Can you imagine what they might do to authors like James Joyce, Mary Daly, Merlin Stone, or Robert Anton Wilson?
One more reason I am thankful for my anonymous blogs.
Once years ago while in a Fine Arts program in a S. Western School, I became visibly upset by the antics of the most emotionally immature people who also happened to be the adjunct professors for studio art classes. They were purposefully giving incomplete or even wrong instructions for projects. I would turn projects in and they would tell me I would have to do them all over again, because some new instruction would be included. Its not like this was written in the syllabus.
And while sitting outside the class, just seething, because I had come to conclude that either these people were chronic pot smokers with zero short term memory, or they wanted to actively encourage me to quit and after having spent thousands of dollars earned with years of my life spent in the military, that kind of pissed me off.
REALL PISSED ME OFF.
So that when one of the tenured faculty showed concern for my upset state, I told her upfront I was very angry and I wasnt sure she wanted to hear what I had to say. She asked me 3 times to share my innermost thoughts and feelings on this. After the third request from what appeared to be a sympathetic ear, I let fly about these two dimwits and their antics.
You might say I cursed like a sailor, because well It hadnt been that long ago, that I had been one. Not once did I threaten to kill, or dismember any of these people. I did make a lot of scatalogical references to their alleged genetic ancestory, some anatomical impossibilities that involved insertian of head in ass {cranialrectalitis} etc., all while describing the actual circumstances that lead to these “feelings.”
Well after that, these assholes acted like I was the crazy one. Even the “nice Lady faculty member” would change direction and take a different route when she saw me coming. It was insulting, it hurt my feelings, I felt totally duped by that horrible person.
If that happened now, I wonder if the paddy wagon would have shown up to cart me off. I did quit that major shortly thereafter. It was a waste of money and time. After watching an older male professor sexually harass an 18 yr old student in front of the whole class, that was it for me.
But I am the crazy one.
At that school, they called the English Department, “Packwood Hall.” Hmmm I wonder how many other crazy chicks went there.
Whenever I see these no-tolerance policies in public schools and higher education, wherein either a creative person, or a mildly troubled person can be kicked out, and/or put away for creative expressions in art or literature, it chills me to the bone. And it reminds me to keep my best work to myself.
I dont need some half ass freudian analysis by someone who might have gotten a degree in “underwater basket weaving,” from an online papermill or community college of BFE.
No matter what, these attitudes and policies are too easily abused by the politically minded and the socially backward, especially when they are challenged by some upstart to peak outside their own confined little mental box.
re:huh
because Psychiatry is a crime against humanity. human rights of freedom we are supposed to believe in.
It is only “disrespectful” to the people who enforce the idea that mental illness is a perminate lifelong illness.
“Why not let people work out their own identities”
I am not forcing anyone to change their identity through mind altering drugs ECT or a locked room, somebody else may have done that.
It is about forced comformity.
Its the implied threat of the new laws: Dont complain too much, or you will be labeled and possibly restrained.
Dont get too angry about anything, even if justified or the same will happen.
You cannot force someone to change their identity, we have established that through our understanding of how ineffective torture is on subjects.
All you can do is damage them, traumatize them, and encourage them through implied threats of hospitalization, loss of 2nd Amendment rights, as well as loss of acceptance in college, to pretend.
Bottle it all up.
How is that helpful?
How does that solve a problem?
I am all for help when its helpful but what is this other than an overcompensation that is politically popular due to expediency and drama in the press? A Knee Jerk Reaction?
the VA Tech Massacre happened because local mental health officials did not do their job. They failed to assess the shooter’s true depth of dysfunction and potential danger.
And that seems to be the theme at this and other blogs. “Professionals” in the mental health profession often get it wrong.
Misdiagnosis either through disinterest, ego-problems, lack of comprehension, a lack of compassion, burn out, etc.,
BUT rather than take the profession to task, either locally in Virginia or nationally, we punish who?
THE STUDENTS.
mmmm Weren’t they the ones that got shot at?
What Cho did is echoed every day through people breaking useless VPOs.
How many angry estranged spouses go on to kill their ex’s and their children, or injur them seriously after being reported for dangerous behavior to the police and the courts. How many have been evaluated and released? Only to go after their target of both their hatred and desire?
There is a fundamental failure in our assessment process of potentially dangerous individuals. The people who actually display dangerous behaviors are often ignored and allowed to run amok. We should not have to rely on college professors to do the job of medical professionals.
And we should be able to rely on medical professionals to be adequately trained to make these assessments.
But there I go, living in fantasy land again.
This is simply shocking to learn. I wonder why my psych profs never taught me about this when I was studying Skinner — i have a psych minor. Doesn’t do me much good now though.
more info: http://www.snopes.com/science/skinner.asp
by the way…Deborah Skinner Buzan is now an artist!
It isn’t just happening in universities. Preschoolers now need to be careful what they fingerpaint…
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071203121428.htm
Where to start? I freaked when Cho’s writings were posted and pointed at as a means of understanding his mind.
There are not enough hospitals for those who may “need” them based on their creative works. Personally, I cannot wait to take my husband to see Sweeney Todd over Christmas. Talk about a creative writing exercise that would terrify most college professors!
And remember if an artist isn’t terrifying or at least stirring it up, they aren’t doing their job as artists.
I did raise the question of what sort of preparations we should have at my college for the student who has a really seriously bad day and decides to commit death by campus police–and my department told me I was only giving plans to the “bad” guys when I told my students how to exit the classroom through the one door in and one door out without any windows. A shooter’s trap if there ever was one.
Do students need mental help? Of course. And so does the faculty. But getting it at the school isn’t going to help anyone. Counseling at colleges and universities is ridiculously awful. But the society’s idea of mental health isn’t any better.
The alienation aspect of modern living is soul destroying. But the college experience isn’t particularly mitigating that situation, now is it?
Great post. Literature is dangerous and that’s precisely why we should keep writing.
The alienation aspect of modern living is soul destroying.
From my experience, I found that mental “help” was the most alienating and destroying aspect of modern living.
Mental health is the same thing as witch hunting. We may be more advanced technologically and economically, but we are still a savage and barbarous breed living in the dark ages.