In a recent interview, Counseling and Mental Health Service (CAMHS) Chief Barbara Lewis discussed the significant decrease in wait times for students seeking mental health care at Harvard University. Lewis spoke with The Crimson alongside Harvard University Health Services Director Giang T. Nguyen, shedding light on the steps taken to address long-standing concerns regarding extended appointment delays.
Lewis acknowledged that the changes come after CAMHS hired additional staff members focused on mental health services and established a partnership with TimelyCare, a telehealth counseling program. The student body had previously expressed grievances over the prolonged wait times to schedule mental health counseling visits through Harvard University Health Services (HUHS).
According to Lewis, CAMHS has successfully met its goal of hiring six access coordinators during the past academic year. These coordinators are responsible for conducting initial consultations with students, which can be conveniently scheduled through the HUHS portal or via telephone.
“Our hope for this was that we would shorten the wait time for students to come in, and we’ve been actually quite successful with that so far,” Lewis stated.
TimelyCare, which Harvard University Health Services partnered with in October 2022, reported a total of 6,418 telehealth visits from 2,785 students as of the end of September. The initial consultations with access coordinators are now available on the same day, and the wait time for virtual telehealth appointments has been reduced to just two to three days.
However, Lewis acknowledged that scheduling an appointment to see a therapist still takes longer, with students facing a seven to eight-day wait time.
During the interview, Lewis also emphasized the wide range of resources available to students, including affinity groups, health workshops, unlimited health coaching, guided meditation, and a community support forum.
“We want to make sure that we have, in an ongoing way, availability for students,” Lewis emphasized.
She estimated that CAMHS is currently running at around 70 percent capacity while awaiting the arrival of new staff members, the last of whom will join in November.
“Each time we add a new staff person, it opens up time,” Lewis explained. “Our hope for this fall was to actually have students really use CAMHS, and then when we started to have a longer wait to get into treatment, then offer TimelyCare.”
Lewis also expressed her commitment to enhancing diversity among CAMHS staff, with the goal of reaching “65 percent diverse” staff members. Presently, HUHS employs 27 clinicians from African American, Asian American and Pacific Islander, Latinx, Middle Eastern, and LGBTQ+ backgrounds, alongside 25 white clinicians. Lewis added that HUHS is actively working on other initiatives to improve diversity training among its staff.
In the same interview, Harvard University Health Services Director Giang T. Nguyen discussed the University-wide “We’re All Human” campaign, a collaborative initiative with the Dean of Students Office and Harvard’s graduate schools aimed at promoting health topics. The campaign introduced new mental health training modules that incoming students are now required to complete online.
“It provides them with a lot of skills that are helpful not only for themselves to address their own mental health concerns but also to be supportive of their peers,” Nguyen said.
Nguyen also mentioned HUHS’s efforts to monitor Covid-19 cases. Despite discontinuing Covid-19 contact tracing in December and dropping its booster requirement in May, Nguyen explained that they are vigilantly “keeping an eye on the impact of Covid-19 in our community” by monitoring wastewater data, illnesses diagnosed in the urgent care center, and in local hospitals.
“Staying on top of prevention, with the new vaccine that is more tailored toward the currently circulating variants of the virus, is a good idea,” Nguyen emphasized.
Students are now able to schedule an appointment for the updated Covid-19 booster vaccine through HUHS or commercial pharmacies. Additionally, HUHS is opening a flu vaccine clinic from October 16 to 20 in the Smith Campus Center. Students who have not yet received the annual flu vaccine will face registration holds applied to their accounts by October 25, ahead of course registration in November for the spring 2024 semester.
