Long before he joined the class-action lawsuit that is changing the way Stanford University deals with students struggling with mental health issues, Harrison Fowler was “a typical nerd” at West Brook High School in Beaumont. He was on the cross-country team and the drum line, and he kept his nose in a book.

“I was studying all the time,” he told The Enterprise last week by telephone.

His commitment to academics earned him a spot at the California school whose alumni roster includes the author John Steinbeck, Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor and numerous luminaries of Silicon Valley. His initial reactions — “seeing how homogeneous these communities are, and how unaware of their surroundings most people are” — were eased once he found a group of like-minded friends and fell into the rhythm of college life.

Then came the thoughts of ending his own life.

“In October 2017 I experienced suicidal ideation,” Fowler said in a court filing for the lawsuit, which was settled last week in favor of the students. “Remembering a mental health presentation at Stanford, I got the courage to seek help from Stanford’s on-campus Counseling and Psychological Services … office.”

After visiting the counseling office and being urged to go to a hospital, he ended up in an outpatient clinic and was prescribed an anti-depressant. That medication intensified his suicidal thoughts, according to court filings.

A month later he was having more suicidal thoughts than ever. After calling a friend, and speaking with a dorm adviser, the police were called. They took him to a hospital in handcuffs.

Once there, Fowler received a visit from a school official.

“While I was in the hospital, Residence Dean Carolus Brown visited me to talk about a leave of absence, telling me that I was most likely going to have to take a year off,” he said in a court filing. “I tried to explain that it was not necessary, that I had been on the wrong prescription, and that it was not good for me to go to Beaumont, where I am from. I begged him.”

A few days later, counselors from Stanford told doctors that Fowler “was going to take a year off.”

“This was the first time I learned explicitly that I was going to be on a leave of absence,” Fowler said.

Before leaving to go home, Fowler opened his school email, which was about to be temporarily disabled.

“They didn’t know at the time whether I would be able to return to campus,” Fowler said. “But I saw an article in a newsletter about a lawsuit against Stanford for their leave-of-absence policies.”

Related: West Brook alum prevails in mental-health lawsuit against Stanford

Fowler reached out to the organization that filed the lawsuit, Disability Rights Advocates, and a month later joined the class action challenging Stanford’s policies as discriminatory. Last week, the university agreed to revise its policies to require students undergoing mental-health treatment to take a leave of absence only as a last resort after considering all other possible accommodations

The experience threatened to break his trust in treatment altogether, Fowler said, and he headed to San Antonio to spend time with his grandparents.

“I was seeing a therapist regularly once a week, which was really helpful,” Fowler said. “I think after my experience with Stanford I was distrusting of mental health treatment in general. … But the people I interacted with in San Antonio, with my grandma, and in Beaumont were really helpful in my recovery process.”

He resumed his studies, isolated by the lack of “access to friends, other resources, faculty.”

“When I came back to Beaumont I was focusing on myself, and focusing on self-improvement,” Fowler said. “I was reading a lot of philosophy, studying calculus for six or seven hours a day and running at least two to three miles a day.”

Fowler said he was proving to himself “that I could still maintain the academic vigor.”

In order to return from his unwanted leave of absence, Fowler was informed that he would have to “provide documentation of engagement in professional treatment,” and submit a “personal statement discussing understanding of why behaviors are of concern.”

Fowler was one of six individuals and a campus organization that prevailed in a settlement with Stanford.

Julia Garrison of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law in Washington, D.C., called the settlement a significant win for individualsin higher education who have mental health disabilities. She said requirements like the one Fowler had to abide by for returning to school stigmatized mental versus physical disabilities.

“It would be ludicrous to make someone with cancer sign a contract saying they should do chemo instead of radiation,” she said. “The reason the Stanford policies were so problematic is that it discourages people from going to get treatment.”

Karen Bower, a lawyer focused on disability discrimination in higher education, said the settlement could be a blueprint for other colleges to follow.

“The settlement is both comprehensive and transparent,” Bower said. “There are a lot of universities with minimalist policies with very little information, and these kind of sparse policies leave students fearful that if they seek help they will be placed on leave.”

Garrison said one of the most important lessons to be learned from the settlement is that students with mental-health disabilities are just as eligible for accommodations as those with physical disabilities.

“The laws that protect Americans with disabilities, those laws protect people with mental-health disabilities as well,” she said.

That was echoed by Monica Porter, a staff attorney with Disability Rights Advocates who represented the class-action.

“I think that students with mental-health disabilities are entitled to equal access to their school services, and an individualized assessment that includes consideration of reasonable accommodation to avoid unnecessary exclusion and equal opportunity,” Porter said.

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Fowler said he is glad he could be part of such a major change, though it carried a personal cost.

“I will admit, it has been quite a lot. To put myself and my family on the spot because knowing my own mental illness, and now the whole world knows that I am struggling with mental illnesses,” he said.

“But I have grown so much over these past two years, and I am doing much better now. I am still improving and I hope to be an inspiration for others to continue to treat themselves and work on themselves, and stand up to any institution that may get in the way of them doing that.”

isaac.windes@hearstnp.com

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