TREATING THE BUREAU

When the task force suggested having a single director, before Barreira was chosen to take on the position, UHS Director David S. Rosenthal ’59 began to supervise both MHS and the Bureau.

Previously, the Bureau reported to Gross, and MHS reported to Rosenthal and Hyman.

The reorganization aims to relieve the Bureau of duties outside its original mission that have crept into its day-to-day responsibilities.

As the number of students with mental health problems increased over the years, the Bureau has begun to treat students with more serious concerns.

“I think that the Bureau has moved in to treat some of this demand,” Gross wrote in an e-mail in January. “This was a departure from its original mission of tutoring and counseling for the usual problems of adolescence and adjusting to college.”

Hyman calls this shift “mission creep.”

“The Bureau had its mission increased,” Hyman said. “It sort of started to creep to help people who had more and more serious illness.”

Hyman said in January that the Bureau should not be treating students with more serious mental illnesses.

“While a lot of students like what [Bureau counselors] do when they show up with depression or other issues, we feel that on balance, students should be getting the agreed-upon best treatments,” Hyman said. “And the people trained to do that are in UHS.”

And as the MHS assumed some of those responsibilities and becomes more closely tied to the Bureau administratively, the interim report stressed the importance of maintaining it as a separate option for students seeking care.

“It would be a mistake to think that the Bureau has now disappeared and that it is now a part of UHS,” Barreira said. “We want an array of services where everyone is working together.”

A BUREAU OF ITS OWN

Both Barreira and the task force interim report maintain that the keeping the Bureau as a separate entity is vital, because of its unique services and reputation for being easily approachable.

But the Bureau’s 11 full-time counselors wrote in a March letter that even if its self-contained structure is maintained, wrapping the Bureau up with MHS under a single leader will undermine its mission as a non-clinical setting.