The bifurcation of mental health care at Harvard has allowed students to slip through the cracks as they try to navigate a complex system while also dealing with their own conditions.

And like D., many students don’t know the differences between UHS and the bureau—or that the bureau provides mental health care at all.

The College’s Best-Kept Secret

The white, wood frame building with crimson shutters at 5 Linden St. is fairly nondescript. Only a small white sign that reads “Bureau of Study Counsel” Out of 30 students interviewed in Adams Dining Hall one night last week, only two knew that the bureau provided any kind of counseling for mental health issues. Some knew it provided academic tutoring. Most had no idea what the bureau did at all.

“They do tutors, study skills, stuff like that,” Jordan M. Stevens ’05 said.

“They have a reading class, and stress management type stuff,” said Sarah M. G. Otner ’06.

“I had no idea why the bureau was there,” said Katherine T. Kleindienst ’05, who went to UHS to get help for depression.

But although students are largely unaware of the bureau as a mental health resource, 931 students from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences received psychotherapy there last year, according to Bureau of Study Counsel Director Charles P. Ducey.

That comprises about a third of total student mental health visits. So why don’t more students know that the bureau is a major center of psychological counseling?

“I’m very happy to have the bureau’s mission fuzzed up,” Hyman says. The ambiguity allows students to use its resources while avoiding the stigma often associated with mental illness.

Ducey says that the bureau does not hide its mental health services.

“We’re straightforward about what we offer,” he says, “it’s just that we offer a whole lot of different things.”

But by including therapy as one of a variety of services—including tutoring, procrastination workshops and a course on reading and study strategies—some say that the bureau deters some of the students who most need its help, says Sarah J. Ramer ’03, former co-chair of the Mental Health Advocacy and Awareness Group (MHAAG).

“There’s sort of a nebulous, fluffy focus that doesn’t do much to help people who are beyond stress,” Ramer says. The bureau “doesn’t always reach the people who need the most help.”

But even critics of the bureau’s amorphous mission concede that its wide focus allows the bureau to have much less of a stigma than UHS.