Dr. Robert Berlin is a busy man.Sitting cross-legged in his cluttered yet comfortable office in the Mailman building, Berlin explains that when the Psychological Counseling Center opened in 1952 to serve undergraduates, the University only housed about 200 graduate students. So when one of them needed face time with a therapist, the center could see them without a second thought.

But in recent years the number of graduate students has swelled to around 1,900, and the center often finds itself hard-pressed to meet the demands of the entire student community, he says.

"[The administration] kept adding [graduate programs], but they didn't add comparable support staff for the graduates," says Berlin, a clinical psychologist who has served as the center's director for about 20 years. He says he and his staff "knew that at some point we just couldn't handle it. We [already] have to handle the undergraduates."

"We reached a critical mass," he says.

But with about an extra $300,000 from the Board of Trustees this year, which was allocated by the University for five new full-time and part-time staff positions, and increased hours for current counselors, the center is about to get an upgrade for the new year.

The new positions-a full-time coordinator of graduate services, as well as a coordinator of cultural education and treatment, a cultural coach, a clinical case manager and a psychiatrist dedicated to graduate students, all part-time-will largely benefit groups Berlin says are currently underserved: graduate and international students.

The added help won't lighten his load, he says with mostly concealed excitement. In fact, the added services may increase it. But the augmented hours and new positions will mean more counselors can meet with more students-including undergraduates, who often complain that the Center's counselors are overburdened.

One junior says she has met with two counselors, but that she only feels compatible with her current one. "Getting an appointment is one thing, but getting an appointment with someone who fits your personality is another," she says. Although she says she is satisfied currently, she feels the Center could do a better job matching students with counselors.

Another junior says the services at the Center are not adequate, and that there are not enough psychiatrists on its staff. He says scheduling an appointment usually means waiting several weeks, and that the psychiatrists available are overworked.

Students interviewed for this article were granted anonymity to respect the confidentiality of their cases.

Other students agree that the wait for appointments can be frustrating. Dean of Student Life Rick Sawyer, who, in his other capacity as Associate Vice President for Student Affairs oversees the counseling center, says this is the result of finding the "next best available moment," but says that with the new staff and increased hours, students will find themselves "much better off."

Berlin says that many of the Center's plans are still "in the pipeline," but that he's already filled the cultural-coordinator position, and anticipates that all five positions will be filled by January. The center currently employs 12 psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers and other clinicians full- and part-time.

"For the student population, it's clear this is an area where their needs haven't been met," says Jean Eddy, the senior vice president for students and enrollment, whose office oversees the counseling center. "So it's fabulous for [graduate] students to have this level of service."



Expanding the 'safety net'

The main goal in expanding counseling for graduate students, Berlin says, is crafting a "community health model" similar to the one that serves undergraduates. He says Residence Life, Public Safety, the academic departments and services and other campus offices act as a referral service for students who exhibit issues ranging from the typical stresses of college life to more serious psychological ones.

"The safety net on this campus is fairly extraordinary," Sawyer says, stressing that the referral network works strictly one way.

But Berlin says "there isn't a comprehensive safety net [for graduates] that parallels the undergraduate approach," and that building one without the necessary funding is not easy.

Berlin and Sawyer say because most graduates live off-campus-only about 90 live in the Charles River Apartments-creating a referral network means working more closely with the graduate schools within the University, and investing about two years to create a comprehensive program. Sawyer says for graduate students, they will rely more heavily on faculty for referrals, because graduate students work more closely with professors in labs and as research and teaching assistants.

The coordinator of graduate services will work at the center year-round, and, in addition to monitoring cases, will respond to emergency calls, as Berlin does for undergraduates, he says.

Dr. Suzanne Harmon, a psychologist at the Center, has been conducting focus groups of graduate faculty, staff and administrators recently to analyze ways of addressing the mental-health concerns of graduate students, Berlin says.

Citing the large number of cases the Center handles-around 500 students each year, and about 50 percent of each graduating class over four-year periods-Berlin says the clinical case manager, a position unique to Brandeis, will help his staff provide a better "continuity of care," and allow the center to conduct more research. He says the position will be three-quarters time and will monitor cases as they relate to the University's academic calendar, so that during breaks, for example, students requiring therapy will continue to receive it correctly.

The position will also track students' satisfaction with their therapy, so that the Center's staff can "understand its students' needs," and make sure that students meet with the most appropriate clinicians, Berlin says.

"That's just the Brandeis way. Make it better, keep trying to grow. Try to implement changes where you see your failures. If somebody comes once and you don't know why they went away, then you don't know if they didn't like the therapist, or just didn't feel like it was right for them, or didn't like being in therapy. But those are very important things to understand," Berlin says.

With the new funds, Berlin says the Center can reevaluate its direction with the community. "We've been so busy doing psychotherapy all these years, we haven't had a chance to look at what we've done and report to the community at large and report the trends," Berlin says.



Cultural innovations



Berlin and Sawyer say that because a much larger portion of graduates are from other countries compared to undergraduates, several of the new staffers will work exclusively on cultural issues and will benefit undergraduates, as well.

Berlin says he recently hired Dr. Joanne Walker as the coordinator of cultural education and treatment, and he says she will work on a number of programs, from creating mental-health guides for graduate students, including Web-based ones in their own languages, to creating a "cultural coaching" program, to pairing international graduate students with undergraduates who plan to study abroad in a sort of "exchange" program.

He says the cultural coach position will help students from foreign cultures in acclimating to the United States and Brandeis through a nontherapeutic model: A student might need help finding a room fan, Berlin offered as an example, or not understand hip-hop fashion. Or they might have more complicated issues, such as problems with a relationship, that don't require psychotherapy.

Walker and whoever fills the cultural coach position will develop these programs throughout the next semester, Berlin says, and he hopes the center will implement them next September.

The Psychological Counseling Center plans to work with the International Students and Scholars Office, which is under Academic Affairs, and the Intercultural Center. Monique Gnanaratnam, the director of the ICC, says she hasn't yet talked to anyone at the Psychological Counseling Center about the new programs, but will soon.



A humanistic model



What makes the Center unique, Berlin says, is that its counseling isn't strictly clinical. Problems related to stress, identity and relationships, among others, are treated as symptoms of adolescence and college life, and not as psychological "problems." He described this method as a "humanistic and health-oriented model" that the Center couples with a clinical approach for other problems.

Berlin says Brandeis was one of the first universities to use such a model, and that schools in the area, like Wellesley College, Emerson College and Boston University, have emulated it.

He says that because of this model, students are best served by a variety of clinicians with different specialties-which is possible because of the large number of part-time counselors. Berlin handles all undergraduate emergencies, and says he's only able to do so because of Brandeis' small size. Berlin acknowledges that the Center could do a lot more with a bigger staff, one that would allow the Center not only to work with more students, but allow constant assessments of its methods.