A recent study out of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto, Canada, found that mental illness costs $51 billion per year in terms of costs from lost productivity. When an employee of a company develops a mental health problem and is forced to take a leave of absence, it costs the company $18,000 (on average) -- more than any other chronic condition. Hopefully the findings from this study grab the attention of businesses and corporations to take the mental health of their employees seriously.
If I could offer a few tips for managers and executives of businesses in terms of managing the mental health of employees, it would be this:
(1) Be realistic about what employees need. Hiring someone or some company to offer a seminar in stress management can be useful -- but it is not like getting a vaccine to ward off a serious illness. Such seminars can be helpful for people with mild to moderate problems with workplace stress. However, they will not prevent someone from developing a serious case of depression or an anxiety disorder.
(2) For those employees who have significant problems with stress, depression or anxiety, individual treatment should be considered immediately. But not all treatment options are equivalent. Businesses should inform themselves of which treatment options are best for their employees. Consider consulting with a mental health expert who has sufficient knowledge of the research literature on treatment options. If your business uses an EPA or is considering an EPA, you might want to ask the EPA to demonstrate how their interventions are empirically supported. And to be clear, the term "empirically supported treatments" does not refer to client satisfaction surveys (which some EPAs prefer to rely on in terms of demonstrating effectiveness). Empirically supported treatments refer to specific types of interventions that have been rigorously evaluated (often through randomized control trials) and found to be effective. For example, if an employee has PTSD, exposure-based CBT is often considered a gold-star treatment, whereas other types of treatment (ex: psychoanalytic therapy) have not received the same level of empirical support -- either through lack of effectiveness or lack of testing.
(3) Taking the time to ensure that employees are treated with the best available care will only serve to minimize disability leaves and maximize worker productivity. Sometimes businesses offer a small amount of money (through insurance claims) for treatment. I've often worked with clients who only receive $500 in coverage per year. When someone has significant depression, this is simply not enough to cover treatment. To put things in perspective using a cost-benefit analysis, providing employees with coverage of $1,000 - $2,000 may seem like a lot of money. But when weighed against the cost of $18,000 when there is a short term LOA, it is clear that investing a little more money in employees' mental health is the most fiscally sound decision.
Dr. Roger Covin
Montreal Psychologist
www.drcovin.ca
If I could offer a few tips for managers and executives of businesses in terms of managing the mental health of employees, it would be this:
(1) Be realistic about what employees need. Hiring someone or some company to offer a seminar in stress management can be useful -- but it is not like getting a vaccine to ward off a serious illness. Such seminars can be helpful for people with mild to moderate problems with workplace stress. However, they will not prevent someone from developing a serious case of depression or an anxiety disorder.
(2) For those employees who have significant problems with stress, depression or anxiety, individual treatment should be considered immediately. But not all treatment options are equivalent. Businesses should inform themselves of which treatment options are best for their employees. Consider consulting with a mental health expert who has sufficient knowledge of the research literature on treatment options. If your business uses an EPA or is considering an EPA, you might want to ask the EPA to demonstrate how their interventions are empirically supported. And to be clear, the term "empirically supported treatments" does not refer to client satisfaction surveys (which some EPAs prefer to rely on in terms of demonstrating effectiveness). Empirically supported treatments refer to specific types of interventions that have been rigorously evaluated (often through randomized control trials) and found to be effective. For example, if an employee has PTSD, exposure-based CBT is often considered a gold-star treatment, whereas other types of treatment (ex: psychoanalytic therapy) have not received the same level of empirical support -- either through lack of effectiveness or lack of testing.
(3) Taking the time to ensure that employees are treated with the best available care will only serve to minimize disability leaves and maximize worker productivity. Sometimes businesses offer a small amount of money (through insurance claims) for treatment. I've often worked with clients who only receive $500 in coverage per year. When someone has significant depression, this is simply not enough to cover treatment. To put things in perspective using a cost-benefit analysis, providing employees with coverage of $1,000 - $2,000 may seem like a lot of money. But when weighed against the cost of $18,000 when there is a short term LOA, it is clear that investing a little more money in employees' mental health is the most fiscally sound decision.
Dr. Roger Covin
Montreal Psychologist
www.drcovin.ca
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