A key part of the Counseling Center's role is to provide services to people in the William and Mary community concerned about a student in distress.  If you are a friend, RA, faculty, staff, or parent of a student who may be having a particularly hard time, please call us.

Helping a friend in trouble

We provide services to students concerned about someone else: a friend, a team member, a sorority sister, or fraternity brother.  The friend or acquaintance may be in crisis or struggling with an ongoing issue like a drinking problem or eating disorder.  In these cases, we would work with you to be helpful to your friend while taking care of yourself.  Often this involves figuring out how to stay in your role (as friend, team member, etc.) and not take on some other role like "parent" or "therapist." We would also discuss strategies for helping your friend seek professional help if the problem warranted it.  Often a friend's feedback and concern is the critical factor in helping a student seek services.  We will meet jointly with you and your friend if that would be helpful.

For additional information on "Helping A Friend In Crisis - What To Do If Your Friend Is Sexually Assaulted," click here.

Services for RAs

Like friends of a student in distress, we often will provide consultation to RA's concerned about a student on their hall.  This usually occurs after the RA has discussed the situation with the Head Resident or Area Director.  Our efforts usually center on helping the RA get the student additional professional help and dealing with the group or hall issues generated by the problem.  If needed, we can arrange consultations with entire halls or floors to help address serious group issues, for example, the death of a student or severely disruptive behavior (such as suicide threats or out of control behavior).

Services to faculty or staff

We will offer a single consultation session and referral information to faculty and staff with personal concerns.  We do not offer faculty and staff ongoing personal counseling.

We encourage all faculty and staff concerned about a student in distress to call us.  We can provide consultation and suggestions for problem-solving.  Please note that we cannot divulge any information about a student without a release of information signed by the student.

We can be reached during business hours at 221-3620.  If your concern is of an urgent nature, please let our receptionist know that  in order to facilitate our response to your call.  For after hours emergencies, a counselor is on-call 24 hours per day and can be reached through the Campus Police at 221-4596.  The Campus Police will page our on call counselor, and he or she will call you back.

In addition, we remind faculty and staff that they are required to notify the Dean of Students when a student threatens or attempts suicide.  We will take immediate action to help assure the student's safety and provide crisis-intervention services.

For addtional information on "How To Recognize And Handle Students In Distress - A Guide For Teaching Faculty," click here.

Services for parents of William and Mary students

We welcome calls from parents concerned about their students at William and Mary.  We can provide consultation and make suggestions for problem-solving.

If you feel your student is in crisis, we can discuss crisis intervention mechanisms available on campus.  For example, we have a medical and emotional emergency protocol to evaluate and protect students threatening suicide.

For less urgent concerns, we can discuss services available at the Counseling Center and through other offices, such as the Dean of Students Office or the Student Health Center.  For example, if your student is feeling overwhelmed by academic demands, we can offer counseling as well as referral information for study skills and academic support services.

If we are already working with the student in therapy, confidentiality prevents us from disclosing any information to parents without a signed release of information from the student.  For example, we would not be able to tell you whether we have seen the student or disclose any information that had been covered in counseling.

If there are family issues you want to address jointly with the student, and assuming it is logistically feasible, we will provide family therapy at the request of the student.   Also, one or two meetings with parents may sometimes be a valuable adjunct to individual counseling.

For some additional information click here to view our brochure "A Guide for Parents."