“I was paying for all my  treatment out of pocket, which is extremely expensive,” she said.

According to Ellison, Harvard does not provide students on leave with insurance because, as a non-profit University, Harvard only sells policies to current students.

“That’s not the business we’re in. The business we’re in is students,” Ellison said. “It’s illegal for us to insure someone who is not enrolled.”

A student who withdraws will receive the applicable student coverage until the last day of the month of the official last day of attendance, according to the Student Health Program website. The student is also eligible to purchase four additional months of coverage in order to help “facilitate a student’s transition from HUSHP to other outside insurance and is only meant to be for a limited duration.”

Once students can finance their treatments, however, they say that  seeing a professional outside of the Harvard environment can be beneficial for their path to healing.

“I think students [on campus] can sometimes see going to therapy or going to get help as one more thing they need to do,” Sharon L. Howell, the resident dean of Adams House, said in an interview last May.

This atmosphere creates a difficult environment for students to get better, said Karina Partovi ’14-’15. Before she took a leave of absence, Partovi saw a professional in UHS who she said struggled to address her concerns with mental health.

“I mean [my therapist] was nice, there was nothing wrong with her, but she was—she didn’t reach me,” Partovi said. “But to be fair, I don’t think anyone could have reached me.”

Yet, once students leave the Harvard bubble, they say that therapy—even when medical offerings available at home are far more limited than those at Harvard—often works better in a new environment.

“There are very very few places in the States or in the world where you can’t get some kind of care,” Ellison said. “What UHS does do is try to help the students and their families think about the transition from our mental health or our physical health to their hometown or their local hospital or local physicians.”

A DIFFERENT KIND OF HOME-WORK

For Ella, receiving therapy and seeing a psychiatrist in the first month of her leave of absence inspired her to find a job in the medical field to fulfil the “period of stability” requirements set out by UHS, working as a research assistant for a geriatric clinic near her home.

One thing led to another, and soon Ella was taking a position as a health care access intern, intent on switching her concentration, fulfilling the requirements to apply to medical school, and dedicating her career to medicine.

Like nearly all students who take time off for mental health reasons, Ella found a job to demonstrate to Harvard that she was ready to enter back into the schedule of a student. But, for many, these jobs appear to play a much more active role in the process of getting better, giving students new direction and stimulation during their leaves of absence.

Partovi, who says she was “shell-shocked” at the beginning of her time off, found a job working as a teacher’s aide at her old elementary school after spending a couple of weeks lying in bed and playing computer games.