La Maladie de Boheme

The 70,000 students who live and work in Paris' Latin Quarter have long been famed for their individualism. They take pride in it; as a tourist attraction and source material for novels, they consider themselves one of France's national assets. Outsiders have long accepted their eccentricities and ascribed them simply to bohemianism. A young man or woman who lived in a fifth-floor garret, dressed like a Basque fisherman and sported an outrageous hairdo, was expected to be glamorously undernourished and suspected of harboring tuberculosis. But otherwise their elders were more worried about their morals than their health. Now, it seems, the diagnosis must be changed: far too many of the students of Paris are mentally sick.

"Statistically, TB is at the top of the students' health problems," says Dr. Daniel Douady, the government's director of school and university health, "but who knows how many mentally ill are walking about? In a few years mental illness will clearly be problem No. 1 -if it isn't already." Adds Jacques A. Gau, president of the National Mutual of the Students of France: "Three-quarters of the students who consult our doctors complain of anxiety, though they usually don't know precisely what the trouble is. And of the remaining 25%, many get social security benefits for other complaints, but their real trouble is mental."

Les petits mentaux often become les grands mentaux at exam time. By U.S. or any other standards, French exams are among the world's most exacting. Many students suffer "exam collapse" and (in extreme cases) "exam psychosis." Although students who flunk can try again a half-year later, they see a first failure as a personal humiliation. To an alarming extent, students use stimulating drugs to keep themselves going through their final swotting: sales of Maxiton (an amphetamine) zoom from 10,000 boxes a month to 120,000 during the May-July exam season and university authorities have issued posters in an attempt to discourage the practice (see cut).

To care for mentally ailing students the Sorbonne has pitifully inadequate resources. On the "Boul' Mich'," a dentist's office is a psychological consultation center after hours (Saturday afternoon and after 6 p.m. on weekdays). Manned mainly by psychiatrists -who are called psychologists to avoid upsetting students who cannot face the reality of their condition -it dealt with 72 patients in May, still had 36 last week although vacations were beginning. Six miles from the city's center, at Sceaux, is a 15-bed university home for more serious but still "benign" cases. Last week it was full to capacity, with eight men and seven women suffering from "anguish neuroses," adaptation difficulties, depression, and exam paralysis. A second home, with 50 beds, is scheduled to open in January. But the need will still be far in excess of supply.

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