The wait to schedule counseling appointments at Dick's House has improved since a College review in May 2005 called for a reduction in wait times.
According to Mark Reed, director of counseling and health resources, the current wait for a counseling appointment is eight to ten business days, reduced from the three- to four-week appointment delay students complained of in an article in The Dartmouth in 2005, "Students seeking counseling encounter four-week wait." Reed attributes the decrease in wait time to the hiring of new staff and improvements in the appointment system.
Each year, approximately 1,000 students seek counseling help at Dick's House, Reed said. Since his arrival at the College in 1991, Reed has noticed that more students seek counseling during Spring term, despite suspicions that winter term would be the busiest due to negative emotional reactions to the lack of sunlight and the prevalence of Seasonal Affective Disorder.
"The winters are brutal for everybody up here and people expect to not feel their best, and so they put up with it," Reed said. "But in the spring they're still feeling really bad, and they get annoyed, and they're like, 'Hey, this really isn't right.'"
According to Reed, stress students feel about impending changes in their schedules is another contributing factor to the increased appointments during Spring term, which Reed described as "transitional time."
Reed noted changing trends in the consistency of counseling appointments in Fall and Winter terms.
"When I got here in 1991, it used to be that the fall term would gradually crescendo to business, with more and more people coming in for help as the term was ending, but now the fall term is pretty busy all term, the winter is more busy, and the spring term has even more," Reed said.
In the 2005 article, Reed said that while the numbers of students seeking therapy increased, there were no changes made to the size of the staff. Since the article was published, the College has worked to improve the counseling system, Reed said.
According to Reed, the most beneficial changes to the counseling department were the increase in staff members and an e-mail notification system to remind students about upcoming appointments. Since the implementation of the e-mail system, there has been a reduced number of missed appointments, and students can cancel appointments in advance if they notice they have conflicts.
The decreased wait time has not gone unnoticed by many students.
"I waited like 2 weeks, which isn't bad for what I've heard from others who have had to wait a month," Lisa Moon '08 said.
According to the Dick's House Appointment Office, the next available appointment as of Feb. 8 is on Feb. 21 -- a wait of nine business days.
