The New York Times by Tamar Lewin
Record Level of Stress Found in College Freshmen(1/26/2011)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/education/27colleges.html

“This fits with what we’re all seeing,” said Brian Van Brunt, director of counseling at Western Kentucky University and president of the American College Counseling Association. “More students are arriving on campus with problems, needing support, and today’s economic factors are putting a lot of extra stress on college students, as they look at their loans and wonder if there will be a career waiting for them on the other side.”


USA Today by Oren Dorell
Schools seek aid to track trouble After Tucson(1/27/2011)

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20110127/1ashooting27_st.art.htm

Faculty members are seeking advice on dealing with disruptive outbursts and intimidating behavior, says Brian Van Brunt, president of the American College Counseling Association.

Jared Loughner, 22, is accused of shooting Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 other people, six fatally, Jan. 8. He was attending Pima Community College in November when he was banned from campus for outbursts that scared students and teachers.

At Western Kentucky University, where Van Brunt is director of counseling, staffers "are looking at what would we do if we had a similar case," he says. His university has three or four students a year who exhibit a worrisome combination of self-isolation and simmering aggression, he says, and they're required to accept treatment on campus as a condition of staying in school.


ABC News by ERIC GORSKI
Colleges Struggle to Cope With Troubled Students (1-17-2011)

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=12631129&page=3

Brian Van Brunt, director of the Counseling and Testing Center at Western Kentucky University and president of the American College Counseling Association, said campuses have made much progress on moving past the "silo" mentality that can keep different departments from talking and sharing information.
Still, even in the aftermath of a tragic incident that can be picked apart for lessons, clear paths forward remain elusive.

"These incidents of violence, they occur very infrequently," Van Brunt said. "And when they do, it's hard to draw a lot of conclusions in predicting future violence."

News-Press (Ft. Myers and Southwest Florida) by FRANK GLUCK
FGCU, Edison expand counseling services amid higher demand (1/30/2011)

http://www.news-press.com/article/20110131/HEALTH/101310345/FGCU-Edison-expand-counseling-services-amid-higher-demand

Some campuses, particularly community colleges, have lagged, said Brian Van Brunt, president of the American College Counseling Association.

However, some have sped up their efforts to do so in recent weeks, he said.

USA Today by Mary Beth Marklein
Students' rights weighed as colleges try to assess threats (1/13/2011) www.usatoday.com/news/education/2011-01-13-colleges-keep-watch-for-violent-students_N.htm

Pima Community College, which suspended Loughner and steered him toward mental health treatment, has been praised for following standard policies. "The school did what they were supposed to do, which is protect their school, require an evaluation," says Brian Van Brunt, president of the American College Counseling Association and director of counseling at Western Kentucky University.

USA Today By Mary Beth Marklein and Brad Heath
Second-guessing red flags, action taken in Tucson case (1/12/2011) www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-01-12-students12_ST_N.htm

"It's not illegal to be mentally ill and ranting and raving," says Brian Van Brunt, president of the American College Counseling Association and counseling director at Western Kentucky University. It "only becomes illegal when there's behavior attached to it that is criminally threatening. As long as they're not imminently suicidal, we don't have the right to commit them to a hospital." Van Brunt says it is uncommon for a school to seek a court order that would force someone to receive mental health care. He says he makes those requests "a couple times a year," most often when students are intoxicated or when students refuse to go to a hospital on their own.

National Public Radio by Larry Abramson
The Tucson Shootings And Mental Health Procedures (1/11/2011) www.npr.org/2011/01/11/132840720/Alleged-Shooters-Mental-Health-And-College-Career

Brian Van Brunt, president of the American College Counseling Association, says that since Virginia Tech, schools across the country have put resources in place to deal with this kind of situation. Dr. BRIAN VAN BRUNT (President, American College Counseling Association): What we see is behavioral intervention teams and threat teams or teams that meet on almost every college campus, both community and residential schools weekly, to discuss at-risk students and to develop action plans to work with the student. For most of these cases, if a student were to act up in the classroom and then was asked to complete an evaluation and they chose not to, there's no more authority they have to have that completed beyond having the student removed from school.

New York Times
Dealing With Mental Disorders on Campus (1/12/2011) www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/01/12/dealing-with-mental-disorders-on-campus/college-psychologists-must-get-out-of-the-office

Gone are the days when counselors and psychologists, whether at a four-year college or two-year community college, can stay in their offices and wait for students with mental health problems to show up on their doorsteps. They need to include outreach and prevention programming to students who are in need. Specifically, they should go into classrooms offering presentations on suicide, mental illness and aggression. They should train key people on campus about warning signs and the importance of connecting the at-risk student to help.

CNN
Anderson Cooper 360 (aired 1/13/2010 @ 10pm EST) www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2011/01/14/ac.loughner.red.flags.cnn.html

DR. BRIAN VAN BRUNT, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN COLLEGE COUNSELING ASSOCIATION: I think the case is unfolding now, Anderson, so we're still taking some information about that. However, a college student being bizarre -- I don't know the last time Chuck was on a college campus, but simply being bizarre or acting strangely is not enough to necessitate an involuntary commitment. What we're looking at here is, we would -- if this was the policy for all campuses, that we would take anyone who was acting bizarre or strange, and require a mental health evaluation, we would have -- we would essentially turn our community colleges and residential schools into inpatient psychiatric facilities. There's a lot of bizarre or strange behavior. It's when it crosses over into threatening other students and becomes aggressive, that's the point where we need to take action. COOPER: But if there's -- and, again, I don't know the answer to this, but, I mean, if you have multiple instances where the police are involved, and you have students saying and teachers saying, you know, they feel concerned, wouldn't the campus police at least, if they knew the law, you know, make that call? VAN BRUNT: I think the campus police did take a step here. They didn't do nothing in this case, they took it forward. They actually separated him from the college through their campus behavioral intervention team, which is a standard practice. They moved forward with the case. They went so far as to take a 22-year-old's rights away and notify the parents. They talked directly to the parents about the situation and moved forward on it, and went another step forward, saying, before you come back to our community, you need to have a mental health evaluation. So, I think they took a number of steps to protect the community college setting there.

Los Angeles Times by Larry Gordon
UCLA stabbing brings back issue of college students' mental health (10/25/2009) http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/25/local/me-college-mental25

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.

Newsweek by Ricki Morell
Colleges Tap a Wider Network to Monitor Student Mental Health (1/06/2011) http://education.newsweek.com/2011/01/06/mental-health-on-campus.html

Today, mental-health counselors must do more than sit in their offices and wait for students to come to them, says Van Brunt, who is Jennifer’s counselor. Most counseling centers now run “gatekeeper” programs that train the community to act as the first responders to signs of trouble. People who see students every day—not just professors and RAs, but fraternity members, athletic teammates, and coaches—learn to watch for warning signs. In addition, since 2007, mental-health counselors on many campuses have been participating in “behavioral intervention teams,” in which they talk with other members of the university’s community and evaluate data about at-risk students. These teams, which generally meet weekly, are formal structures that universities have put in place to assess potential campus “threats,” such as suicide or violence. Many keep data through a computer system to address pressing concerns and long-term problems. “One lesson from Virginia Tech is to look at not only immediate behaviors, but also address those times when at-risk students fall off our radar,” says Van Brunt at Western Kentucky, which created a behavioral intervention team in 2008. By contrast, the gatekeeper programs are primarily focused on teaching campus members how to administer “mental health first aid.” Often, gatekeepers feed information to the behavioral intervention teams.

Minnesota Public Radio by Tim Post
Minn. colleges say they watch for warning signs in students (1/011/2011)

Jared Loughner's community would have most likely called the authorities if the student would have made a threat of some kind, said Brian Van Brunt, president of the American College Counseling Association. "However if you have a student who's acting erratic in class, isn't following along with classroom rules, is frustrating other students, that's not something that goes to the local police," Van Brunt said. Van Brunt said it's hard for colleges, even if they're closely monitoring student behavior, to make a connection between odd and erratic behavior and violence.

The Huffington Post by Associated Press
Tufts Uses Dogs To Ease Student Exam Stress (12/15/2010) www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/15/tufts-uses-dogs-to-ease-s_n_796922.html

Therapy dogs have long been used to cheer up the sick and elderly. But more colleges are embracing the idea as a stress reliever and a way to engage students, said Brian Van Brunt, president of the American College Counseling Association. Schools have been developing more flashy methods over the past 10 years or so by sponsoring stress-busting events ranging from late-night yoga and oxygen bars to some school leaders dressing up as the "pizza fairy" and delivering free food. "College students are very stressed at this point of the year, and some are playing catch-up," said Van Brunt, also director of counseling and testing at Western Kentucky University. "Going to events like these allows students to clear the brain and press the reset button."

Inside Higher Education by James Heggen
Red Bulls and Risky Behavior (6/2011, 200) http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/06/11/energydrinks

Some campus officials go even further, questioning the conclusions of Miller's study. Brian Van Brunt, director of the Counseling and Testing Center at Western Kentucky University, said it was hard to know what to make of Miller's finding because the study only asked if students had consumed an energy drink on a day in the past month, but not how many. As with exercise or alcohol, Van Brunt said, consumption of energy drinks in moderation is not a problem. Van Brunt said that better indicators existed to identify this type of behavior. He suggested that other questions asked in the study would be better warning signs for people who may have risk taking behavior. For example, people with this type of behavior tend to partake in unprotected sex. As for what colleges should be doing, Van Brunt draws an analogy to credit cards. He could see a possible need for educational programs similar to those that some colleges use to warn students about getting into credit card debt, so that students don't run into problems with energy drinks.

The Star Ledger by Staff
Ultrinsic Website lets college students wager on grades at Rutgers, Princeton (8/10/2010) www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/08/website_sponsoring_gambling_on.html

But Brian Van Brunt, president of the American College Counseling Association, believes students who use monetary gains as motivation for grades could be heading down a wrong path. "A lot of companies see college students are potentially easy marks for this kind of thing," Van Brunt said. "It seems to me this is some kind of gateway to other things, like a step or two away from sports books, that can get people potentially into trouble."