Nguyen Says HUHS Prioritizing Accessibility to Mental Health Services, Declines to Comment on Luke Tang Trial

Updated May 3, 2024, at 2:15 p.m.

Harvard University Health Services Director Giang T. Nguyen said in a Thursday interview that HUHS is prioritizing accessibility to mental health services, currently offering same-day availability for initial consultations.

Nguyen said HUHS has “very good access to mental health resources right now,” and they are “focusing on taking care of our students now and providing the services that our students need, particularly at this time when the semester is winding down.”

“You can check the CAMHS website for weekly updates on how good our access is,” he said. “Currently, same day availability for initial consultations with a licensed therapist.”

Nguyen declined to comment on the recently concluded wrongful death trial about Luke Z. Tang ’18, a sophomore student who died by suicide on Harvard’s campus in 2015. Though the case against Harvard had already been dismissed, a trial moved forward against Harvard Counseling and Mental Health Services employee Melanie G. Northrop, who was found not liable for Tang’s death.

During the interview, Nguyen cited policies against commenting on personnel issues and declined to answer any questions related to the trial.

Amid persisting affiliate concerns around long wait times for CAMHS, the University has committed to working on expanding student access to mental health services by increasing the number of mental health appointments and offering new services.

Nguyen said HUHS is “poised to be able to provide much better access as we move forward,” pointing to gaps in staffing that the group has worked to patch.

“Over the past year, we’ve been doing a lot of hiring in order to refill the ranks, particularly within our primary care area, internal medicine and urgent care,” Nguyen said.

“We’ve been able to really make some tremendous improvements in terms of access to clinical services at CAMHS, so those are the main things that we’ve been working on over the year and that we’re very proud of,” Nguyen added.

In particular, Nguyen highlighted the positive impact of TimelyCare, a telehealth service HUHS debuted in 2022 that provides virtual mental health care.

According to Nguyen, the cumulative number of TimelyCare visits — including those for scheduled counseling and psychiatry — received by students to date is approaching 11,000. In a February interview with The Crimson, CAMHS Director Barbara Lewis reported the cumulative count at the time to be around 9,000.

Nguyen added that subscriptions to TimelyCare’s services continue to grow, with 137 new enrollees and 632 visits in March.

Per Nguyen, 40 percent of these visits were conducted after hours, which helps “because our students often are busy during the day and so many of them want to do other things and have a mental health visit in the evening.”

These after-hours visits are possible, Nguyen said, because “TimelyCare is a remote service, and they have access to clinicians who have a Massachusetts license, but they may not live in Massachusetts.”

TimelyCare has seen high reviews from student patients, according to Nguyen, who said the average visit rating to date has been 4.9 out of five stars for scheduled counseling, health coaching services, and psychiatry visits.

Reflecting on the past academic year, Nguyen said the annual flu clinic held at the Smith Campus Center — which provided immunizations for 12,000 people — was a “real big success” for HUHS.

“One of the biggest things that we did was to revamp our approaches to the influenza vaccination campaign,” Nguyen said. “We’re really excited about being able to repeat that and actually do bigger and better next year.”

“We actually already have our flu vaccine clinic dates scheduled,” he added.

Looking forward, Nguyen said he does not foresee any changes or updates to the vaccination requirements for the upcoming academic year.

Nguyen concluded the interview by warning that though the rate of respiratory illness continues to decline in Massachusetts, students should maintain practices to uphold community health and well-being, keeping an eye out for other types of infectious diseases and gastrointestinal illnesses.

—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.