Psychiatry and higher education in Finland.

Abstract

The difficulties and mental disturbances of Finnish university and college students are in most instances due to personal factors, retarded or otherwise disturbed emotional growth and maturation interwoven with family relations, and insufficient attainment of independence and adulthood. The significance of intellectual difficulties is of minor importance among the factors referred to above, since even in the cases where marked intellectual difficulties were found/p=m-/ i.e., in about one-fifth of the total number examined and given psychotherapy/p=m-/emotional disturbances proved to be the primary reason. Rather loose social ties among the students, the lack of campus life, and the reticent Finnish character favour the fatal isolation from suitable company. Finnish students live in great financial and housing difficulties, which considerably increase the already serious pressure and strain of the college years. University students are very susceptible to short intensive psychotherapy. It would be most desirable that the students should have their own ( full-time) psychiatrist. The fact that an uncommonly high number of students/p=m-/more than one-third of the entire student body of Helsinki University/p=m-/discontinue their studies is probably in most cases due to emotional disturbances, though the students themselves provide every other possible cause for their failures.