Threat Assessment

1) What resources are useful for counselors? Why?

As we could see in the reading resources there are many useful resources for counselors. It is important to remember that no one tool can be effective for all situations. Risk/threat assessment has to be done carefully to respond appropriately to every unique situation. The guide that we read had a lot of good information in it, but again it is only a guide there is no book with all the right answers. This will be the counselor’s judgment call ultimately and training in this area is definitely needed.

I believe that risk assessment is important and I want to learn more about the proper steps to take (this is why I am looking into this topic and looking for further training now at the PRACTICE where I work). It is also very important to get to know the client you are assessing and to ask the appropriate questions as we saw in the lecture 6 video example on threat assessments with the non-traditional student. As this guide concluded, with collaboration between schools and the community are important, I specifically liked the use of The Threat Assessment Team (TAT) used at Virginia Tech that promoted campus safety. Another organization that was mentioned was the Association of Threat Assessment

We can see from research within the resources provided that usually there are signs to look for and sometimes individuals are acting out because they need help with their own internal pain and struggles. The key is to trying to intervene and help them cope before anything bad ends up happening. This guide explained that the primary objective of both a threat assessment inquiry and an investigation is to determine whether a student poses an actual threat potential within the school. Again, this is a very important to see that the differences between these two concepts before trying to assess the