Psychiatric Visits by Faculty Increase a Record 15 per Cent

Faculty use of the University Health Service psychology and psychiatry departments increased by a record 15 per cent during the 1973-74 academic year.

Figures to be released in the '73-74 UHS report indicate an increase from 91 to 105 in the number of Arts and Sciences Faculty members using UHS psychiatrists and psychologists. The average yearly increase from 1969-72 was 6 per cent.

Popular acceptance of psychiatry and psychology is largely responsible for the increase, according to staff doctors, though specific Health Service programs, such as marital counselling and group therapy also have attracted Faculty members.

"The Faculty has become more relaxed about psychiatry and has found us useful, helpful and cheap," said chief of psychiatry Preston Munter. "We're pretty good competition."

Marital counselling, recently instituted at the UHS, has brought Faculty members to the psychology office, according to psychologist Stuart Pizar.

"The idea of coming to the UHS to work out marital problems is more acceptable now than it was a year ago," Pizar said. "We do a lot of therepy with couples; they come in the context of the couple but often end up being counselled separately."

The UHS's confidentiality and the fact that it is free for Faculty also contributed to the increase, according to psychologist Kenneth Dinklage.

"Faculty members are accepting the confidentiality of our offices," Dinklage said. "We are free for Faculty. The idea is finally going around that we are a good place."

The psychology and psychiatry staffs agree that the problems they are seeing in Faculty members are not extraordinary. Depression and difficulties with personal relationships predominate.

"It is not that people's problems are any different now," Dinklage said. "It is just that they are willing to get help in dealing with them."