Farnsworth Speaks On Mental Difficulty

Student faculty relations, grades, social organizations, and athletics are the chief causes of mental difficulty, Dana Farnsworth, Director of the University Health Service, said last night in a Lowell Institute lecture.

When grades become an end in themselves, overstrong attitudes of competition result and students may crack, and the over emphasis may cause students to stoop to cheating, he continued.

A college mental health program must principally "concern itself with the 'normal' student, the one who is working against unnecessary handicaps," Farnsworth said, but still "there is a qualitative difference in dealing with college students, as they are a group with superior intelligence and desirous of getting back to their work soon."

The psychiatrist will have a two-fold task in colleges, according to Farnsworth. Primarily he should act as a physician that a student can consult for mental troubles, but also has the duty to communicate his findings to the faculty.