HUHS Reports Increases in Mental Health Care Usage

Harvard saw “slight increases in students accessing mental health care” in a recently distributed survey, according to Harvard University Health Services Director Giang T. Nguyen in a Monday interview with the Crimson.

Last spring, Harvard participated in the American College Health Association’s National College Health Assessment survey, which gathered data on physical and behavioral health and wellness — including substance use, sexual health, mental health, sleep habits, exercise, and nutrition — of graduate and undergraduate students.

According to Nguyen, the survey — conducted from Feb. 26 through March 8 — garnered responses from 3,823 students, equating to a response rate of just over 19 percent of the total student body invited to participate.

“In my conversations with the people who nationally oversee the data collection for NCHA, and also in talking to other campus health leaders at other universities, we actually had substantially higher response rates than other universities,” Nguyen said.

Per Nguyen, approximately 69 percent of survey respondents were graduate and professional students, which closely aligns with the makeup of Harvard’s student population.

“It’s what we would expect to see in terms of the overall distribution,” he added.

According to Chief of Counseling and Mental Health Services Barbara Lewis, CAMHS saw “a record number of consults for the month of September,” corroborating the survey’s findings.

This month, CAMHS had 550 consults, compared to 467 last September, per Lewis. She added that TimelyCare — a teletherapy and health coaching platform — conducted 760 appointments and 66 wellness coaching visits in August and September.

“Students are really looking at the videos,” Lewis said. “The number one video that is viewed is on sleep, and the second one is on social worries and anxiety.”

While usage of mental health resources have increased, Nguyen said the survey also revealed “marginal decreases” in self-reported anxiety levels, which he credits to “the University’s efforts in the mental health space” such as TimelyCare, the “We’re All Human” campaign, and increasingly accessible care and services provided through clinical access coordinators at CAMHS.

Moving forward, Lewis said CAMHS is committed “to meet the students’ request, and I think we’ve been able to do that thus far.”

According to Lewis, satisfaction scores from TimelyCare average 4.9 out of 5.

Lewis also said CAMHS’s goal of 65 percent diversity — across race and ethnicity as well as sexual orientation — has been met, while “over 50 percent of the providers for TimelyCare are non-white providers.”

“There are certain categories that it’s been very difficult to find clinicians, but mostly in the Jewish and Muslim area,” Lewis said.

Per Lewis, CAMHS is also continuing to make efforts to reduce patient wait time for mental health appointments — a consistent student complaint.

“The wait time for initial consults is three to five days, but if you call the office, you can get a same-day initial consult,” she said. “The wait time to actually get into a therapist schedule is between one and two weeks now.”

Aside from mental health concerns, results from the study show sleep may be another common concern among the Harvard student body.

“We found that about 60 percent of students reported that they were getting seven to nine hours of sleep, which, of course, means about 40 percent are not getting seven to nine hours of sleep every day,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen added that “27 percent of the students who responded to the survey said that they really feel they need more sleep than they’re getting,” mirroring video interest on TimelyCare.

The survey also assessed students’ levels of physical activity.

According to Nguyen, “75 percent of students are indeed getting the recommended 150 minutes of physical activity per week,” but added that “about one in four students could use some more physical activity over the course of the week.”

“We know how important that is — not only for physical health, but also for emotional well-being,” he added.

Nguyen said Harvard’s recently developed mobile app CrimsonZip — a group fitness connection platform — aims to find “community building around physical activity.”

According to HUHS spokesperson Tiffanie A. Green, Harvard is “pretty much in line with what other schools who have participated in the survey have done.”

“Pretty much what we have seen across the board, that Harvard is not some huge outlier in terms of other universities,” she added. “Many of the students are going through the same things, they’re just in different regions of the country.”

—Staff writer Alex Chou can be reached at alex.chou@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Camilla J. Martinez can be reached at camilla.martinez@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @camillajinm.