Some students go outside Harvard for long-term therapy, though the Bureau of Study Counsel does offer some long-term care.
Rachel sought help at the bureau through individual counseling but was not satisfied, so she paid to go to private, off-campus therapy.
"At the doctor's there is a more structured professional approach," she says. "The Bureau of Study Counsel didn't seem that professional to me. It is an important resource because anyone can go there, but if you have the means I would recommend going outside it."
Kaplan chose to go off-campus for help when she saw a poster in her Canaday Hall entry-way.
"I was just lucky my parents didn't mind paying for it," she says of the $50-an-hour private counselor she hired.
But bureau Director Charles P. Ducey says that on-campus help is perhaps more experienced and better qualified to help students than off-campus clinics are.
"The positive thing about getting help on campus is that a student can have a more coordinated approach," Ducey says. "If a student has an eating disorder it's probably best no only to have just the psychological help you need to understand why you're doing this, but help form a primary care physician, a nutritionist, a nurse practitioner."
New Services
A few new services for students with eating disorders may answer undergraduates' complaints.
UHS may offer a new bulimia support group this year.
And Kaplan is now trying to found a group to do outreach on the issue around the campus.
Demystifying Eating concerns with Awareness, Discussion and Education (DECADE) has won provisional approval from Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III, but is still awaiting an okay from the Committee on College Life.
"The mission is to inform, to raise awareness about eating concerns on the Harvard campus, and to make resources on the Harvard campus widely available to people," Kaplan says. "The idea is to stop it from being a taboo issue. Right now, I feel people don't even talk about it."
Kaplan says she hopes to get her message out through events such as panel discussions and video screenings in the houses.
"You deserve to lead a life where how you feel about yourself doesn't rest on how you feel other people look at you," she says. "It's a thing a lot of people wish they didn't worry about."
'It's a college-bound sort of thing--it has to do with the environment: the competition, issues of the dating scene, controlling your eating for the first time, dealing with the stress of exams'--Former Professor Todd F. Heatherton