Following the shooting at Northern Illinois University on Thursday, mental-health professionals from other colleges were quick to offer emotional and logistical support to their colleagues in DeKalb, Ill.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University, and other institutions in the area volunteered to send grief counselors to Northern Illinois to help its mental-health staff provide counseling services at seven locations on the campus today. Some even arrived on the campus Thursday night to counsel students in dormitories.

Chris Flynn, director of the Thomas E. Cook Counseling Center at Virginia Tech, also stepped in to help, offering insight and advice based on his own experience handling the aftermath of the fatal shootings at Virginia Tech 10 months ago.

“In a situation like this, the needs can become overwhelming for a counseling center,” said Mr. Flynn. “We had over 300 volunteers on our campus in the days following the incident … It’s important that students know that counseling is readily available.”

Mr. Flynn sent Micky M. Sharma, director of Northern Illinois’s Counseling and Student Development Center, materials he had distributed to faculty members on leading discussions about the tragedy, how to recognize symptoms of traumatized students, and handling post-traumatic-stress disorder.

“We discovered after the shooting here that there were 286 classes that had a student or faculty member who died or was injured in the shooting,” said Mr. Flynn. “Even large campuses like ours and NIU are really small when it comes down to being connected to individuals who were personally affected.”

Virginia Tech’s counseling services will be available over the weekend to students, Mr. Flynn said, because his office is concerned that news of the Northern Illinois shooting will bring back traumatic memories for students in Blacksburg, Va.

In addition to messages of emotional support, counseling professionals across the country took up collections for takeout-food gift cards, according to Gregory T. Eells, president of the Association of University and College Counseling Center Directors.

Mr. Eells said such efforts were helpful because counselors working around the clock often do not have much time to eat.

“Unfortunately, people have a real sense of how to respond to this type of situation because of what happened at Virginia Tech,” said Mr. Eells. “We know that helping out with basic needs like food are essential right now, when they are so busy.”

In a mass e-mail, Lesley Sacher, president of the American College Health Association, urged her members to offer “special care to assist our NIU colleagues.”

The incident “should strengthen our collective resolve to do whatever we can to foster a safe environment in which college students can learn and grow,” Ms. Sacher wrote. —Elizabeth F. Farrell