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Guide Helps Employers Get Best Mental Health Care for Workers

The guide describes steps businesses can take to provide effective, low-cost mental health care to improve employee productivity and lower insurance costs.

The Partnership for Workplace Mental Health, a program of the American Psychiatric Foundation, has published A Mentally Healthy Workforce—It's Good for Business, a guide to help businesses initiate effective mental health programs for their employees and assess the quality of existing ones.

Many employers realize that mentally healthy workers have fewer medical costs, lower absentee rates, and higher productivity than those who might benefit from but don't have access to mental health care. What may not be as clear is how to gauge the effectiveness of such services or what they should consist of to best meet employees' needs.

A Mentally Healthy Workforce describes questions that employers should ask insurers concerning the types of care and medical expertise their mental health care coverage offers. The availability of educational material, referral programs, and early access to skilled clinicians when an employee first seeks assistance and after a diagnosis is made to ensure access to appropriate medication and psychotherapy should be determined.

The guide also encourages company benefit managers and other company directors seeking improved mental health benefits for employees to emphasize to top management the direct and indirect cost savings that result from investing in mental health services by decreasing absenteeism and contributing to the general health of employees.

To strengthen existing programs, the guide urges companies to integrate all health care services, prevent overlap and service gaps, join business coalitions that act as a group to negotiate lower costs for plans, and collaborate with other stakeholders to improve the health care system.

The document also contains examples from successful mental health programs by top companies such as Sprint, IBM, and Dow Chemical.

The 23-page guide is posted at <www.workplacementalhealth.org/businesscase.aspx>.

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