Beginning next year, the College will formally be able to make students take a medical leave of absence if the level of care and accommodation they require exceeds the resources that either the Houses or University Health Services (UHS) can provide.

This and several other changes to College policy regarding health-related leaves of absence were approved yesterday by the Faculty Council, the 18-member governing board of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Rather than establish new policies, these changes only make explicit what has long been the unstated policy of the College.

The changes address issues where “a student needed some sort of real hospitalization...or if the student became too disruptive for the college life of his roommates and the like,” according to Classics Department Chair and Council member Richard F. Thomas. “A residential House is a good place for a person who has a temporary problem to come back to,” he said. “[But] if a problem has become too serious, it is not an ideal environment.”

Secretary of the Administrative Board John T. O’Keefe said that the College wanted to make the policies explicit to better address cases where a student’s health is managed by ongoing medical treatment.

“In such a case, we may feel that a student is better off really dealing with the medical issues, and then coming back to Harvard when they are stronger and in a better place to resume their studies, than in trying to do both at the same time,” O’Keefe wrote in an e-mail.

Pending the expected approval of the full Faculty next month, the new policies will be made manifest in changes to the language in the annual Handbook for Students.

Another policy change states that mental as well as physical health problems are criteria for an involuntary leave of absence, while a third change clarifies the procedure by which College administrators and UHS evaluate whether a student’s mental or physical health should mandate a leave.

Other related changes give the College the right to require that a student consult with UHS before readmission and that freshmen who leave in the fall term wait until the next fall to return, “in order to support the first year academic experience,” according to the text of the proposed changes.

Another change prevents students who leave in the later part of a term from returning to their studies the following term.

In other business, the Faculty Council also approved the list of courses to be offered next year by the Extension School.

—Staff writer William C. Marra can be reached at wmarra@fas.harvard.edu.