Provost’s Approach to Mental Health Troubling

To the editors:

Although University Provost Steven E. Hyman’s editorial was undoubtedly motivated by a deep concern for students’ well-being, I was distressed by the language he used and the tactics he intended to employ in addressing issues of mental health (Op-ed, “Understanding Mental Health at Harvard—Together,” Nov. 17). Hyman insists that reducing stigma is central to ensuring the recognition and treatment of mental health “problems”—and doesn’t note the painful irony inherent in his statements. Central to destigmatization is empathic response; there is no empathy in referring to the complexities of an individual’s feelings and responses as a “problem.” Hyman squarely casts his lot among those who search for biological and genetic bases to mental disorders, and though these approaches can bring relief to many, his strictly clinical approach misses the point—there are real, understandable reasons that any member of the Harvard community might feel even chronic sadness, reasons that need to be listened to, understood and addressed. The limitations of Hyman’s approach become evident when he searches for a reason explaining why college students continue to be diagnosed with mental disorders in ever-increasing quantities. His suggestions—that “the age of onset [may be] dropping” or that, in the past, “young people with mental disorders might not have made it to Harvard” ring hollow; perhaps it’s rather that college administrators, who ought to be the ones caring for and listening to students, instead want to explain away any dissonance between the realities of student experience and the persistently happy, fully-functioning normative individual by recourse to our determinate and inviolable “biology.” Sadness can be but is not always a result of “genetic vulnerability;” until Hyman, indeed, until Harvard College culture as a whole can avow sadness as a legitimate emotion and an understandable response, the student experience of alienation and disconnection will persist.

Emily S. Douglas ’04

Nov. 19, 2003