Rapid Improvement

Coon feels this explains why disorders which, if found in an older person might lead to ominous predictions, but among students yield rapidly to treatment. An American-Psychological Association pamphlet put it another way: the college psychiatrist "sees people who are of superior intelligence, who are 'fresh from their symptoms,' and who are for the most part eager to get on with their work as soon as possible."

One distinction about the college student, Coon feels, is in the different types of responsibility a young man who goes to college, and one who does not, must take.

"The high school graduate who at eighteen takes a job in the work-a-day world, and soon afterwards takes a wife, may settle down promptly to responsible family living. The course of his life may not be altogether unruffled but at least he is usually able to gain a certain self-esteem and sense of manly accomplishment as he comes to grips with the real business of life.

College Immaturity

"Young men, on the other hand, who enter the field of higher learning lead a somewhat anomalous existence. They achieve the physical stature of men but retain the status of schoolboys. The college student, although scarcely any longer all adolescent, is still engaged in the difficult, sometimes turbulent, passage from youth to maturity.

"But the passage is unusually prolonged by the very nature of college life, and such an over-extension of this transitional period only serves to compound and intensify the emotional problems and strains which are naturally associated with it."

Farnworth, in an essay for a college and school association, called "Success and Failure as Viewed by the College Psychiatrist" has characterized the college years as ones of tension between biological maturity and the normal impossibility of marriage, of possibly frantic efforts to belong to the new college society, and of uncertainty, as well as ferment, of ideas.

More particularly, Farnsworth noted five "monotonously familiar" aspects of the background of students who fail or do poorly in-college work. 1) Discord between parents, making it impossible for the dependent child to love one parent without getting in trouble with the other. 2) "Absence of warm feelings and sincere emotional reactions on the part of those with whom the growing person has contact."

3) Inconsistencies of discipline which indicates that discipline is just another word for the parents' convenience. 4) Relative lack of masculine attributes in the father or feminine attributes in the mother, making a student unsure of what he or she wants to be like. 5) "The presence of distorted or squeamish attitudes about body functions, especially those of sexual nature." 6) Living in a "poor neighborhood environment."

Difficult Situations

In a Lowell Institute Lecture delivered last Spring, Farnsworth described stress situations which he felt were common in college life. Among these he named were, choosing a college because parents wanted it rather than out of personal preference; having very famous or successful parents; coming to a college where the standards are much higher than those the student is used to; sudden confrontation with a profusion of courses, and being held back, although a bright student.

How do the students who have these emotional problems find their way to the Psychiatric Clinics? The Hygiene Department's annual reports over the past 20 years show several usual sources of new patients: Freshman physical examinations, University Medical clinics, Deans and other administrative agencies, friends, parents, and finally, students who come voluntarily. From the first Hygiene department report on patient-referrals to the present, the number coming from Deans and other administrative offices has increased, and the number coming from the medical clinics has decreased. The number coming voluntarily varied from 10 to 20 percent until last year when a third came of their own accord.

Coon and Farnsworth have no ready explanation for the sudden spurt in the number of voluntary appearances at the Clinic. The services it offers have been advertised for years. Farnsworth has noted little resistance among students when the idea they might benefit from a talk with a psychiatrist is suggested. Coon says that his experience in first meeting students is that they are not too uneasy.

"In my experience," Farnsworth says, "the present college generation has to a large extent either overcome, or else has not acquired the idea that seeing a psychiatrist is a disgrace, that it is an admission that one is crazy or a weakling, or that it it an unwanted luxury."