[2006alum]

Not sure I agree with this description. As an RA for a frosh dorm, I was trained to look for signs and when to call the RDs to consider a 5150 - which was part of almost 3 weeks of RA training. Fortunately I never confronted that situation, but several friends who were RAs did, and several of their residents were temporarily involuntarily committed. If you don't know about it, that's for a reason - the entire thing is kept exceedingly on a need to know basis.

Obviously, Stanford is not perfect, but in my time at the university, I though it took these issues seriously, and it trained RAs to be friendly and authoritative, but not officious, and it kept us from having to play the role of the bad cop, precisely so our residents would keep their doors open and confide in us as much as possible. I'm not sure how things have changed since then, but as someone who saw the lengths the university went to, I did feel like the entire residential education system precisely as a failsafe to prevent worse case scenarios.

indeed, and thanks for offering this and confirming that the r a's are attentive and caring.

i believe the recent question on the thread, raised by katie's family,  is if, when, and how to contact parents. can you perhaps also comment on whether you were trained to suggest support between the kind attention of the r a and involuntary commitment - such as contacting parents, suggesting psychotherapy, etc?

Once the 5150 took place, it was out of our hands and into the RD's (Residence Dean), so I can't say precisely what the protocol was. But my impression was that the parents were notified any time someone was admitted to the hospital, or at least whoever is the next of kin on the emergency contact forms students fill out. IIRC, we also had access to emergency contacts info, but my view was any time that was possibly necessary, it was better to reach out to the RD first, and the few times I did that, the RD took over from there. On a handful of occasions, I would have the parents reach out to me on the back end to facilitate resumption of normalcy. (I can think of two times in particular where Frosh broke limbs and had mobility issues, etc., that I had to help sort out.)

In terms of mental health more generally, our PHE (peer health educator) facilitated a session at the start of the year during a house meeting where folks from the Bridge would come and discuss student peer resources. I'm almost certain a similar schpiel was provided with folks from Vaden. That said, I think we had much better training for dealing with mental health crises at an 8 or 9 out of 10, and less so with everything at the 3-7 range. Generally speaking, "mental health" was not a commonly used parlance when I was there, which probably reflects the generally more stigmatized nature of seeking mental health assistance then than now.

To me the larger question with all of this, however, is more about the cult-ure of perfection than the need to give automatic access to parents. I never felt uncomfortable giving my family a warts and all account of my life, so I can't imagine being in Meyer's shoes and not getting my parent's advice about it. Then again, I also never had to save penalty kicks to win a national championship, so no one was ever deluded enough to think I was perfect in the first place...

[2006alum]

Not sure I agree with this description. As an RA for a frosh dorm, I was trained to look for signs and when to call the RDs to consider a 5150 - which was part of almost 3 weeks of RA training. Fortunately I never confronted that situation, but several friends who were RAs did, and several of their residents were temporarily involuntarily committed. If you don't know about it, that's for a reason - the entire thing is kept exceedingly on a need to know basis.

Obviously, Stanford is not perfect, but in my time at the university, I though it took these issues seriously, and it trained RAs to be friendly and authoritative, but not officious, and it kept us from having to play the role of the bad cop, precisely so our residents would keep their doors open and confide in us as much as possible. I'm not sure how things have changed since then, but as someone who saw the lengths the university went to, I did feel like the entire residential education system precisely as a failsafe to prevent worse case scenarios.

indeed, and thanks for offering this and confirming that the r a's are attentive and caring.

i believe the recent question on the thread, raised by katie's family,  is if, when, and how to contact parents. can you perhaps also comment on whether you were trained to suggest support between the kind attention of the r a and involuntary commitment - such as contacting parents, suggesting psychotherapy, etc?

Once the 5150 took place, it was out of our hands and into the RD's (Residence Dean), so I can't say precisely what the protocol was. But my impression was that the parents were notified any time someone was admitted to the hospital, or at least whoever is the next of kin on the emergency contact forms students fill out. IIRC, we also had access to emergency contacts info, but my view was any time that was possibly necessary, it was better to reach out to the RD first, and the few times I did that, the RD took over from there. On a handful of occasions, I would have the parents reach out to me on the back end to facilitate resumption of normalcy. (I can think of two times in particular where Frosh broke limbs and had mobility issues, etc., that I had to help sort out.)

In terms of mental health more generally, our PHE (peer health educator) facilitated a session at the start of the year during a house meeting where folks from the Bridge would come and discuss student peer resources. I'm almost certain a similar schpiel was provided with folks from Vaden. That said, I think we had much better training for dealing with mental health crises at an 8 or 9 out of 10, and less so with everything at the 3-7 range. Generally speaking, "mental health" was not a commonly used parlance when I was there, which probably reflects the generally more stigmatized nature of seeking mental health assistance then than now.

To me the larger question with all of this, however, is more about the cult-ure of perfection than the need to give automatic access to parents. I never felt uncomfortable giving my family a warts and all account of my life, so I can't imagine being in Meyer's shoes and not getting my parent's advice about it. Then again, I also never had to save penalty kicks to win a national championship, so no one was ever deluded enough to think I was perfect in the first place...