Theraphy overload on campus.

• Author: Vatz, Richard E.
• Position: Psychology

THE EVER-GROWING specter of psychological counseling centers is haunting colleges and universities--and the utopia they aim for may be more a dystopia of dependency.

There is no data base to document how many psychological counseling centers there are or how much universities spend on them. Experts we spoke with say that it might be a good idea for such information to be available, but that it is not accurately ascertainable at this time. They estimated, however, that the "vast majority" of universities have psychological counseling centers of widely varying sizes and that there is a comparable variety of subsidization processes for such counseling.

Historically, psychological counseling centers have grown exponentially from practical nonexistence before 1970 to their near ubiquity on college campuses today. Invariably, through literature and interviews, one learns that counseling professionals sincerely believe that there are ever-increasing stresses that strike students, aged 18-23, which require more and more counseling for alleviation. In James Archer and Stewart Cooper's influential work, Counseling and Mental Health Services on Campus: A Handbook of Contemporary Practices and Challenges, they proclaim that "The need for effective counseling and mental health services on college and university campuses has never been greater." One could make this argument--at least that the need is great, if not "never been greater"--for occupational or career counseling and even college mentoring, but not for dependency-creating mental health services.

Moreover, these purveyors of psychologically disabling assistance seem incapable of finding young men and women of student age to be responsible for their problems in living: Archer and Stewart insist that many problems, including substance and alcohol abuse, profoundly have influenced "formative years of students," and "a considerable number ... surfer from resulting psychological and emotional disabilities and deficits." It does not seem to occur to these writers that many of these young men and women have made their own bed, so to speak.

Psychological counseling centers at colleges and universities often claim that hundreds of students, if not thousands, need special academic dispensation to be provided by professors and the schools in a variety of ways. Categories of psychological disability may include Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity (ADHD). learning disabilities, alcohol withdrawal, and a large array of allegedly authenticated aliments listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Diseases (DSM-IV) of the American Psychiatric Association.

The delusions of grandeur and grandiosity of the stewards of campus psychological counseling are difficult to exaggerate. (Could they be suffering from Delusional Disorder-Grandiose Type?) Archer and Cooper reason that, for those facing all of the allegedly unique problems that modernity presents them, "... Many of our students will not be able to function as students or effective citizens without [personal and career counseling]."

There are many paradoxes that inhabit this psychological/psychiatric/educational system. The counselors--often psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and others--genuinely believe they are serving a growing need of increasingly problematic and...