Leaving home: crisis and opportunity.

"Gaudeamus igitur, juvenes dum sumus!" Young people have not quite completed the developmental tasks of adolescence by the time they leave home to attend university. Geographical separation from family offers an opportunity for learning and personal growth, with the ultimate objective the acquisition of an education in the broadest sense of the word. University life with its peer pressures and academic stresses offers its own challenges and rewards. Unless there is close co-operation between family doctors and student-health physicians, the medical care of young adults degenerates into crisis management with loss of all the benefits of continuity of care.