The task at hand

The breakdown of Virginia Tech's mental health system - including Seung-Hui Cho's treatment, communication among staff and problems with confidentiality issue - has led colleges nationwide to re-examine the effectiveness and reach of their mental health programs.

Syracuse University will launch a Task Force on Student Mental Health Concerns by the end of the semester, advancing efforts to conduct a campus-wide review by a year. While specifics have not yet been decided, the task force will be led by Anastasia Urtz, dean of students, and will include a half-dozen SU offices as well as student representatives.

"Anything they can do to help students who are struggling, who are having any kind of difficulties, would be great," said Valerie Kotyra, a Solvay resident. Kotyra's daughter, Rebecca Caraway, committed suicide in 1999 by jumping off a bridge. She was an SU junior at the time.

Urtz said she plans to have the task force organized by the end of the semester, most likely a small steering committee with numerous subcommittees, and to have a final report written "by the time students leave in May."

"We're looking to focus our energy on looking very broadly at our mental health support systems for students," Urtz said in reference to the new task force. "We've reviewed the Virginia Tech panel report and have started looking at our own programs internally."

Such a task force had been in the works well before the Virginia Tech shootings.

In the Division of Student Affairs' Strategic Plan for 2007 to 2012, a Task Force on Student Mental Health Concerns was to be established by fall 2008. Immediately after Virginia Tech, however, with the encouragement of Chancellor Nancy Cantor, the deadline to establish the task force was pushed up to fall 2007.

"With the task force, we will examine whether those systems are providing the best reinforcement for one another without encroaching too much on one another's authority or areas of responsibility," Urtz said in regards to the various departments involved in providing mental health services at SU.

According to the Strategic Plan, the task force will address issues concerning alcohol, drug abuse and related violence; suicidal and other self-injurious behaviors as well as student psychiatric, mental health and disability issues.

Student Affairs, the Dean of Students Office, the Counseling Center, Health Services, Judicial Affairs, the Office of Prevention Services (OPS) and the Office of Residence Life will participate.

The first focus should be "educating the task force members about the current state of mental health on our campus and nationally," said Rebecca Dayton, director of the Counseling Center. "I don't believe you can bring all these people together and they may not even know what's going on with mental health these days."

Urtz also wants students to participate.

"Students are able to ripen up the issues - they make us relevant, and they can evaluate solutions," Urtz said. "A strategy that might be just perfect for another institution might be a disaster on our campus. Our students are the ones who really craft that for us ultimately."

This recent renewed focus on mental health programs, though it arose from a tragedy, has produced a "call for college mental health centers to be more comprehensive," Dayton said. "It's not solely the responsibility of just the Counseling Center to be attending to the mental health concerns anymore. It has to be a collaborative approach."

When mental health programs fail

In Kotyra's living room in Solvay, a life-size colored pencil portrait of Caraway, done by a local artist, stands on an easel in the corner. It is a colorful, constant reminder of her daughter.

"She totally captured my daughter," Kotyra said.

Her daughter, Caraway, struggled with managing her depression when she got to college. Kotyra said her daughter had acted differently in the months leading up to her death. She was not acting like herself. While Kotyra does not blame the university for her daughter's death, she sometimes wonders what would have happened had Caraway's treatment been different.

One day in 1999, Kotyra called Caraway's therapist at the Counseling Center to find out what was going on with her daughter. At the time, Caraway was 23 years old.

"There was a verbal agreement that (the therapist) could talk with me," Kotyra said. "She stood beside me and gave her verbal consent, and he still would not talk to me. It was almost like she was standing there pleading with me for help. I was asking her therapist for help, but he was refusing it because of the whole confidentiality thing."

On Sept. 18, 1999, Caraway's 24th birthday, she was still not acting like herself. By this time, Caraway had moved back to her home in Solvay.

Kotyra said she tried calling all of the hospitals in Syracuse to find someone willing to come talk to her daughter, but she was continuously told that no such service was offered.

After finally getting in touch with the crisis outreach mobile unit at St. Joseph's Hospital, she found it was closed for the weekend. She left a message. On Monday morning, they called back.

"I told them it was too late, she was already dead," Kotyra said. "My daughter could have been saved."

Caraway had jumped off a bridge.

"When I went to see her therapist after her death, he told me he never got any idea whatsoever that she was going to take her own life," Kotyra said. "He thought things were going fine in their sessions."

SU takes confidentiality laws very seriously, though safety always comes first, Dayton, director of the Counseling Center, said.

"The counseling relationship is confidential to everyone. … Parents, teachers, everyone," Dayton said. "Having said that, if a student is a direct threat to someone else or a direct threat to themselves, there are ways that we can 'break confidentiality' in order to protect the safety of the student. We can talk to anyone as long as a student gives us permission."