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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 24, No. 15. 1961.

Medical Service and Counselling Programme for Students

Medical Service and Counselling Programme for Students

A number of people are becoming convinced of the necessity for both a health service and psychological counselling programme for students. Both of these services are taken for granted in the vast majority of Universities in America and in a considerable number of the British and Australian Universities.

The case for the former has been put more frequently, and so I want to concentrate my remarks on the urgent need for a student counselling programme, using some of the points made in a report made on a mental hygiene service for students at Yale University. This service has been operating for 36 years.

There is sometimes a feeling that "common sense" advice should be an adequate tool for handling most student difficulties, and that those students who do not respond to this treatment do not deserve to survive in the university community. The fact is that "good advice" is normally completely ineffective with the vast number of people who suffer from periods of anxiety and depression, fears and compulsions, and who are troubled by insomnia and fatigue and gastrointestinal upsets. As a group they constitute a large cross-section of the university population; the brilliant student is represented as well as the slower student, the rich and poor, as well as the athletic and unathletlc.

Many of them manage to cope fairly adequately with the demands made on them, but in a number of cases, above average ability is stunted and stifled by emotional difficulties. In some cases, possibilities for the realization of a brilliant intellect may never be realised, as the personality is overwhelmed with the pressures of life. This academic wastage alone would constitute a valid reason for making psychological help more available. The country desperately needs every university trained person it can get, and no effort should be spared to eliminate those factors working against successful university participation. There is considerable concern at present regarding the high university failure rate; surely the introduction of a psychological counselling service would be one important remedial step.

For the most part, a university counselling service would be concerned with those whom a psychiatrist would regard as relatively "normal,"

The problems which disturb them emotionally and physically have arisen in the normal processes of their growth, and have been aggravated by the difficulties of adjustment to university life. Sometimes they never manage to come to grips with their problems, and just go through life with their effectiveness impaired, thinking that they are somehow "born to be unhappy." Experience has shown that in many cases considerable help can be given; but the psychological help must be available. A small minority of students coming to the counselling service would be classed as severely ill — this would include those who were psychotic, psychopathic or severely psychoneurotic. They would be referred elsewhere for treatment or hospitalised. Work with these people would not be the purpose of the counselling service.

If part of the university s function is to produce mature and well-trained men and women to lead in community and national life, it is hard to see how some form of guidance or counselling programme can be omitted. Problems such as those stemming from family relationships, sexual growth, behaviour and attitudes, and social adjustment do have an effect — sometimes a disastrous effect on academic performance. For many students the idea of carefree university days is just a myth. The experience of coming to university for many people usually coincides with the climax of adolescent changes in their physical, emotional and intellectual lives. As an individual at a particularly trying stage in the process of growth, the university student is going through an inevitably difficult transition. He is developing physically and is or should be approaching maturity in his attitude towards himself and in his relation to other people. At the same time he is placed in a more or less unfamiliar environment and expected to come to terms with it. Generally practically no help is given at all, and the student is just expected to manage as best he can. The high failure rate is a commentary on this state of affairs.

The problems associated with growth and transition seem almost universal amongst students, and the fact is that many would profit in terms of greater academic effectiveness, and greater happiness, by the existence of a university counselling programme at Victoria.

Student.