The College Mental Health Center: A Report After Ten Years

Abstract

The College Center is a unique mental health facility providing care for thousands of students from many colleges in the Greater Boston area. The authors report on data collected during the 1975–76, 1976–77 school years regarding patient variables such as: gender, year in school, academic major, presenting problem, and others. The center's handling of these patients is reported in terms of diagnoses, treatment recommendations, and numbers of visits. Several commonly held staff assumptions and hypotheses are tested, and from the data available in this study, are not generally confirmed. The impressions, however, of a more recent decrease in antisocial acting out behavior and drug abuse (other than alcohol) and an increase in patients presenting with more classical neurotic and adjustment symptoms are confirmed.