Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance
For employers seeking to reduce the financial and human costs of mental health issues, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.
Partnership for Workplace Mental Health tagged posts
We asked and you responded! Here are some of the great answers we received; please add your wish in the comments below. Let us know what you think!
I wish that more companies come to understand the incredible opportunity they have to reduce stigma and help people access needed treatment for mental illnesses.
Clare Miller, director of the Partnership for Workplace Mental Health, APA Foundation
Marcas Miles, MA
Senior Director, Marketing & Communications, Employers Health
The stigma that come with mental health issues present harmful barriers to care in many capacities, but they’re particularly detrimental in the workplace, where Americans spend a great deal of their time.
Few people are comfortable discussing depression and other mental health problems with their colleagues. Yet, ineffectively treated, depression remains an issue that leads to employees failing to get needed care, widespread loss of productivity, and short-term disability claims for employers.
Food for Thought This Thanksgiving
As we approach Thanksgiving, all of us at CFYM offer our thanks to people who we have engaged with and have supported this unique advocacy blog. It was our vision when we launched the blog in May to provide a forum to bring peers, families, policy and legislative experts together to participate in dialogue around the issues that matter most to us – access to quality mental health care.
We have much to be thankful for this year, and in the spirit of what CFYM is all about, we’d like to share a sampling of messages from our expert contributors. Read below what they’re thankful for as they reflect on the holiday.
Clare Miller
Director, Partnership for Workplace Mental Health
Employers who seek to address mental health issues in the workplace have a daunting task. After all, a comprehensive mental health workplace program could include the following:
- developing a mental health policy that complies with federal and state law
- implementing an employee assistance program
- training managers to recognize mental illness and make referrals
- offering mental health wellness programs, such as stress reduction and mental health awareness trainings and mental health screening tools
- supporting employees’ health care needs, including providing adequate health insurance and allowing treatment-related time off
- addressing employees’ concerns about their co-workers, including providing support services in the event of a mental health-related emergency or death (e.g., attempted or completed suicide)
- communicating with employees about mental health to allay their concerns about job loss, stigma, etc., and encourage them to get help
The good news is that there are a number of programs and resources to help employers address their workplace mental health needs. Today, we look at two companies that have successfully introduced mental health programs, and Clare Miller shares information about Right Direction, a new program from The Partnership for Workplace Mental Health and Employers Health.
Clare Miller
Director, Partnership for Workplace Mental Health
Organizations like the Partnership for Workplace Mental Health and Families for Depression Awareness have long advocated for employers to address mental health in the workplace, citing both visible (e.g., disability payments) and hidden (e.g., lost productivity) costs of depression among employees. As we have previously discussed on this blog, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires that mental health care be included in health care coverage. As the ACA carries an affirmative obligation for certain employers (50 or more employees) to provide health insurance, employers now have the opportunity to impact employees’ mental health broadly through proactive wellness programs and individually through their employee assistance plans and ultimately their health insurance programs.
In this post, Clare Miller explains the essential role of employers in advancing mental health and—even apart from the ACA—the critical reasons for employers to address the mental health needs of their employees.
Employers are an important constituency to engage in advancing mental health in the United States given their power in affecting how much and what kind of care employees and dependents actually receive. Indeed, about 157 million Americans receive coverage through employer-sponsored health insurance.
Employers are getting more involved in healthcare because many realize that employees are their most important asset—their human capital. They’re also focused on healthcare because it is such an enormous expense, as evidenced by the oft-quoted fact that General Motors spends more on healthcare than on steel.
Many employers realize that they can use their purchasing dollars to leverage the healthcare system to demand better quality. And demanding it they are; employers are pushing strategies such as value-based purchasing and outcomes-based contracting. They are aligning incentives to produce better outcomes, as in the case of value-based benefit designs, where copayments might be lowered or eliminated to encourage people to access care and services to manage chronic illnesses.
One of the first examples of this approach was focused on diabetes management. A large employer eliminated the copayments associated with diabetes medication after realizing that high cost-sharing was leading workers to forgo medication, which led to increased hospitalization costs. In response, the employer aligned incentives to be sure that workers could afford the treatment to appropriately manage their condition. Importantly, they married this strategy with others, such as patient education about diabetes management.
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