Standing Guard

Sometimes as a teacher of a subject every student must take (composition) I feel as if I am on the front lines of a battle. In recent years, with shootings at colleges beginning to pop up, like the ones that used to happen at high schools like Columbine, I look askance at some students sometimes, wondering if any of that will happen here, and hoping with all my might that it won't.
However, today I met a student who fit the profile of potential shooter too well for comfort. He came for a routine enough matter: to discuss an essay he had written for a composition class. Yet something clearly didn't add up.
It was a challenging, college level assignment, a 3-6 page essay analyzing a novel. But on the paper itself, next to his name, he identified this as an assignment for an low level developmental writing class, one where students probably would not be asked to read a complete novel, never mind write a paper like this one. And suspiciously, he didn't remember who the teacher was and had to consult the schedule of classes to figure it out, even though it is already quite late in the semester.
When I identified this as a college level class, he admitted he could not remember things anymore, was experiencing black outs ,and did not sleep more than 2 hours per night. He didn't look disheveled at all, or even haggard. He seemed clean and sedate, an average looking student, if a bit on the thin side. Yet as he told me about his feelings of uncontrollable anger and the furious rides at high speeds he takes on the freeway, my stomach flipped like a fish in a net, and I was not thinking so clearly myself. He said he had consulted a psychologist on campus, but that person was not helping him.
Generally in a circumstance like this, with one of my own students, I would walk that person over to the counseling center. But this time, for some reason, I merely admonished him to go back to the person he saw immediately and tell that person exactly what he just told me.
But later I thought better of it, and told some people around campus about this student, giving them his name and identification number. Better safe than sorry, I think, and hope that someone gives this poor man some assistance.