On Sept. 9, Dartmouth students using Headspace — an app for guided meditation, sleep and breath work — through the College’s institutional subscription were informed by email that Dartmouth had ended its partnership with the app and, with that, their memberships. The College ended the institutional subscription, which began in 2022, to focus on Dartmouth’s own mental health offerings, the Mindful Dartmouth project and the Commitment to Care plan, Student Wellness Center executive director Caitlin Barthelmes told The Dartmouth.
Mindful Dartmouth is a network of mindfulness experiences, including classes, retreats, cultural events, art and nature, that aim to cultivate a campus culture of “mindful resilience, authentic connection and compassionate leadership,” according to the initiative website.
The Commitment to Care plan is a five-step strategic initiative to integrate wellness into all areas of the College, launched by College President Sian Leah Beilock and then-Provost David Kotz in 2023. The plan’s objectives center around improving student well-being, creating an inclusive community, preparing students to navigate both success and failure, supporting students experiencing mental illness and investing in evidence-based approaches to changing needs. “Most” of the plan’s 73 action items have been completed in the past three years, according to chief health and wellness officer Mark Reed.
Barthelmes explained that decreasing student usage of Headspace and an increase in the College’s own offerings led the College to choose not to renew Dartmouth’s contract with Headspace, which was up for renewal this year.
“Our original contract accounted for the entire community being able to and choosing to use Headspace. It was a very big contract,” Barthelmes said. “From the very beginning, not unexpectedly, a smaller percentage of staff and students engaged, and we were happy to support that.”
There was no “dramatic” decline in student use of the mindfulness app, Barthelmes added.
“The numbers were made pretty steady with a very slight decline,” he said.
Former Dartmouth Student Government health and wellness chair Julia Zichy ’27 said she believes ending the Headspace partnership is a “travesty” because in-person therapy, meditation and breathwork are not “accessible” for every student.
“It’s very frustrating to hear that Dartmouth would do that to its students, especially because it has always been reinforcing as an institution its Commitment to Care,” she said.
While Zichy said she believes the College has done “better than it has in previous years in order to take care of its students,” she was “put off” by the College’s implementation of artificial intelligence in mental health care by creating Evergreen, a student-built AI wellness platform.
“The best way to really target mental health is peer-to-peer, person-to-person,” Zichy said. “Talking to an LLM would only create a sense of inauthenticity and a lack of sincerity when it comes to the institutional approach to mental health.”
Reed said Beilock has made student wellness one of her “top priorities.”
“The last three years we have seen growth across the board,” Reed said. “With the Commitment to Care strategic plan, we want to really center well-being in everything we do, not just in health and wellness, but all across the College.”
While developing the College’s own mental health programing, the Student Wellness Center “noticed that the usage rate for Headspace was declining” while what other things “moved up,” Reed said.
“We thought, ‘Hey, Headspace is good. We have another alternative. We built these things,’” Reed said. “We want to invest in what we think is best for students.”
Reed explained that Evergreen is separate from the Student Wellness Center’s programs but could be a “collaborator” that connects students to resources at the College. He added that Evergreen is a wellness app, “definitely not” a therapist.
“There is no intention to have Evergreen substitute the in-person options that we have now — I see Evergreen as a faculty research project,” he said. “We’ll see if it turns out to be something that contributes to our community, but it’s definitely not coming out of the health and wellness budget.”
As an asynchronous platform, Headspace helped students sleep, meditate or de-stress from their studies anytime, anywhere. The Student Wellness Center aims to continue to “support that additional network” of online resources for students, Barthelmes said.
“We do know that students sometimes want to complement in-person practices with app-based online things,” Barthelmes said. “We also know some students might want to experiment with an asynchronous or virtual option before they come to it in person.”
Barthelemes added that the Student Wellness Center website has a wide variety of audio and visual recordings for sleep, meditation and relaxing from study stress. It also has a curated list of free apps that serve similar functions to Headspace.
Though the contract with Headspace has ended, students can access an additional year on the platform by emailing the Student Wellness Center and receiving a code, Barthelemes said.
Headspace did not respond to requests for comment. Evergreen staff did not respond to requests for comment by time of publication.
Julia Zichy ’27 formerly wrote for the arts section of The Dartmouth. She was not involved in the writing or editing of this article.
Kay Alvito ’29 is a news reporter from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil studying comparative literature and creative writing. On campus, she is very involved with the arts as a member of the Rude Mechanicals classical theatre company and the dance group Street Soul.
