Last fall, Brown’s Counseling and Psychological Services announced the launch of a new partnership with TimelyCare. The platform seeks to “provide Brown students with on-demand access to mental health care from a diverse, culturally competent provider network,” according to the announcement.
Currently, TimelyCare serves more than 2.3 million students, faculty and staff at over 350 colleges and universities within the United States, according to the service’s Senior Customer Service Manager Neil Beschle.
For licensed psychologist and current CAPS Director Bryant Ford, the partnership was in part born out of an increasing national demand for mental health services. “Many counseling centers have been trying their best to meet the demand, but recognize that not everyone is going to be able to have access, or access in a timely fashion,” he said.
While Ford noted that CAPS has changed its model over the past few years in an attempt to increase students’ access to mental health resources, he still cited concerns regarding students’ knowledge of CAPS services.
“My concern, and I think the concern of many students, has been that when the model shifts and changes, it’s hard to be able to know what CAPS does in any given semester,” he said.
CAPS considered three other teletherapy platforms for a potential partnership, but they ultimately found TimelyCare to be the “best in terms of meeting students’ needs,” Ford said.
The partnership provides all Brown students with “free access to up to 12 teletherapy sessions per year,” as well as “wellness videos about sleep hygiene, nutrition, managing stress,” and other topics.
According to Beschle, TimelyCare’s community of health providers aims to reflect the “diversity of backgrounds, identities and experiences found in student populations.” He added that language line translation services are available in over 240 languages.
Ford hopes that the new partnership alleviates some of the scheduling challenges which, according to him, students have previously faced.
“CAPS closes at 5, so if your schedule doesn’t allow you to be seen, it’s going to be hard,” he said. Now, “you can schedule evening appointments with TimelyCare, or if you want to see your clinician on the weekend, you can do that,” Ford explained.
Ford noted that one of their biggest priorities with TimelyCare, which he described as a “complement” to CAPS services, is increasing accessibility. “We want to make sure that people can (access) services in the ways in which they need them,” he said.
For Michael OuYang ’26, the partnership is a “fantastic idea.”
As a high school student, OuYang founded a nonprofit organization called No Empty Seats, which “aims to spread awareness about mental health and raise money for suicide prevention,” The Herald previously reported.
“I think that every school should get to a point where finding mental health resources and help isn’t something that students need to search for when they are struggling,” he wrote in an email to The Herald.
“All students have different stressors and therefore have different healing and coping mechanisms,” OuYang added. “Having diverse, efficient and accessible mental health organizations on campus ensures that the most amount of people are benefitted.”
Aniyah Nelson is a University News editor overseeing the undergraduate student life beat. She is a junior from Cleveland, Ohio concentrating in political science and sociology. In her free time, she enjoys listening to music and watching bloopers from The Office.
