Harvard counselors agree that one of the most therapeutic approaches to freshman loneliness and alienation of all stripes is simply to stress how common such suffering is. "I've heard so many upperclassmen say that they felt so lost when they were freshmen, and had the feeling that they were the only ones who weren't in step with everyone else," says Gould. "So many people feel that they're the only one who's homesick and friendless. But Freshman Week is hard no matter how you cut it."

Additionally, many advisers and social workers at Harvard suggest that their own services are often under used. Often, they say, there is an unfortunate stigma associated with seeking professional help. "It's something we think about a lot," Vogel says. "A lot of the sort of people we'd like to reach don't want--don't need, in fact--to define themselves as sick."

Perhaps, Wacker suggests, "you have to be around here for a while to believe that the records we keep are really confidential."

The two most prominent Harvard agencies for students seeking therapy are the UHS mental health services and the Bureau of Study Counsel, a Linden Street frame house which offers counseling for academic problems. Often, Wacker points out, such problems actually have their roots in more complicated emotional difficulties, and one function of the Bureau is to refer such cases to UHS.

But Harvard counselors have especially high praise for an imaginative agency in the basement of Stoughton Hall called Room 13. Founded in the early 70's as a drug crisis center, Room 13 currently serves as an all-night sounding board for undergraduates with anything at all on their mind--from excitement about a good grade to suicidal depression.

"We're willing to listen to real light conversation or something much more emotional. If people show up in tears or hysterics, that's fine--we'll just be with them through it, and get whatever is there to come out," says Michele Flournoy '83, one of two co-directors of Room 13's staff of 30 undergraduates.

While Room 13 often passes the night with no complaint more serious than a lousy grade on a paper, Wacker credits the service with keeping the College's suicide rate as low as it has been: a total of 10 during Wacker's 11-year term with UHS (three of which came in his first year). No Harvard undergraduate has committed suicide since an incident during the 1980-81 school year, and no suicide has taken place on campus since 1975, Wacker says.

"Room 13 has really helped get people in to see someone in trouble, who otherwise might not have talked to anybody. They've often enticed callers to seek help," Wacker says.

For all the many opportunities for unhappiness during the first year at Harvard, Wacker suggests that freshmen are making the transition from high school with greater ease than they were when he joined UHS in 1971. When he joined the health services, Wacker recalls, freshmen visited the mental health department most frequently of all four classes; the rate declined each year, with senior year the lowest.

Today, Wacker says, the statistics are exactly the reverse: freshmen are the least common class to seek psychological help, and seniors are the most common. Wacker offers two possible explanations for this flip-flop: the increasing uncertainty of finding a desirable job or place in graduate school on the senior end, and improved secondary-school counseling on the freshman end.

"There are still problems peculiar to incoming freshmen," Wacker says. "It's still a very difficult transition. But I think most freshmen eventually weather it very well."