According to Catlin, the average undergraduate visitor to UHS Mental Health Services is meeting with a professional for the first time and needs only five or six visits to straighten out his or her concerns.

"The typical student is someone in sophomore year saying that he's having difficulty concentrating on work, he's losing interest in courses, he's concerned with an ongoing relationship," Catlin says.

"Students want to talk about concerns and priorities. We try to help them understand what goes into these situations. Medication is sometimes used but that's usually not the case," Catlin says.

Students come to the Bureau of Study Counsel with more than just classroom concerns, Ducey says.

"Because of the bureau's name, students think about us as the place to go for academic difficulties," Ducey says. While that is an "adequate" perception, Ducey notes that many students also come in to discuss broader personal concerns.

"These include pain over the breakup of a relationship, difficulty with eating and food, difficulty in freeing oneself from family expectations, or not feeling like going on anymore with life," he says.

The Bureau of Study Counsel also offers workshops and groups on such topics as group dynamics, "creative relating," anger and men--"Being a man today can be terribly confusing," one sign reads.

Both Catlin and Ducey stress that all consultations with professionals at the Bureau and at Mental Health Services are strictly confidential.

The two services deal with many of the same issues, and Ducey says that which one students choose has to do with such factors as their referral source and whether they define their problems in medical or non-medical terms.

In addition, some make their choices based on the different atmospheres of the two centers--"warm, welcoming, informal or professional, medical, modern," Ducey says.

But Catlin maintains that Mental Health Services is informal too, saying, "We're friendly and supportive. We talk back."

Students are usually just looking for someone to talk to, Catlin and Ducey say. But both centers see some students who have more serious problems.

"Maybe 5 percent of the people we see are diagnosed with serious psychological problems," Catlin says.

"The two most common ones are bipolar depression, or manic depression, and the more serious, less common problems of a schizophrenic type," Catlin says. "These students have illusions, hear voices, experience paranoia and don't function very well. They usually need time off."

Catlin says that the two main reasons for hospitalization are suicidal, or acutely psychotic, tendencies. But such incidents are quite rare, he says.