Dear Members of the Harvard Community,
The report of the Task Force on Managing Student Mental Health made clear that students at Harvard have faced rising mental health challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic compounded those challenges, reinforcing the imperative to find and implement solutions that would improve mental health and wellbeing on campus. As part of that effort, I convened the Implementation Committee on Student Mental Health and Wellness earlier this year. The Implementation Committee has been working hard to put the recommendations of the Mental Health Task Force into action. Thanks to their efforts, we have begun to introduce a number of new programs and resources intended to improve wellbeing and mental health at Harvard. They include several components:
Student Wellbeing and Mental Health Awareness Campaign
We're All Human is a University-wide awareness campaign to prioritize wellbeing, open conversations on campus about mental health, and destigmatize seeking mental health care. The campaign benefited greatly from the feedback and guidance of undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff. Campaign posters and materials throughout campus will include a QR code that community members can scan to quickly access services and resources on the Student Wellbeing at Harvard website.
Expanded Access to Care at CAMHS
Counseling and Mental Health Services (CAMHS) has begun two programs to address the increased demand for student mental health services on campus. The first program, TimelyCare, provides every registered student with up to 12 telehealth therapy sessions each academic year. This service is offered through TimelyMD, a virtual, student-centered health and wellbeing service provider. These 12 sessions per student are offered in addition to services already available to students through CAMHS.
The second program is a new CAMHS Access Team of full-time staff dedicated to supporting and guiding students seeking care. The Access Team will conduct initial consultations with each student who contacts CAMHS to determine appropriate care based on the student’s needs and connect them to the right resource for them. The addition of the Access Team will enable CAMHS to respond more quickly to students in need, and free up nearly 1,450 additional hours of clinical time for CAMHS clinicians to see students, nearly doubling the current available clinician hours at CAMHS.
Crimson Folders
The Crimson Folder is a quick-reference guide targeted to faculty, staff, postdocs, and teaching fellows, but also available to students, to help them be a resource to students who they recognize may be in need of support. It can help community members recognize a student in distress, respond attentively and empathetically, and refer the student to someone best equipped to help. Each School has developed its own Crimson Folder with School-specific resources. You can find the Crimson Folders on the Student Wellbeing at Harvard website.
Wellbeing Online Learning Modules
Beginning last week, each School’s Dean of Students notified students about the Mental Health and Wellbeing for Students Online Learning Module which was created to help students prioritize and support wellbeing, seek care when needed, help a friend in need, and practice self-care through skill building and utilizing resources available to Harvard students. New and returning students will be strongly encouraged to complete the module this fall semester. Later this fall, we will launch a similar learning module for faculty, academic personnel, and staff containing information on how to support students in need. Both modules will be available on the Student Wellbeing at Harvard website.
Implementation Committee co-chairs, Dr. Giang Nguyen, Associate Provost for Campus Health and Wellbeing and Executive Director of Harvard University Health Services, and Robin Glover, Associate Provost for Student Affairs, shared more information about these new programs and resources with the Gazette.
I urge you to familiarize yourself with these new resources and use them when you need them. Making these resources available to the community is an important step forward, but we know that there is still more to do. Our work will continue through the fall semester and the rest of the academic year, as we reaffirm our commitment to making Harvard a place where success does not come at the cost of mental health and wellbeing.
Improving mental health and wellbeing includes cultural change. That won’t happen overnight; it requires sustained collective effort. But there is much we can do right now. You don’t need to wait to put your wellbeing first or to get the support and care you need. I look forward to the progress we will make together to ensure that Harvard is a community that embraces and prioritizes mental health and promotes the wellbeing of our students—and of everyone else.
Sincerely,
Alan M. Garber
Provost