Warning: Business not exempt from mental health concerns

Brice Wallace 

Utah has the fifth-highest suicide rate in the nation. Utah’s depression rate is about 22 percent and usually runs 2 percent to 3 percent above the national rate. One in five American adults suffers from mental illness in a given year. One in seven Americans will face substance addiction.

Armed with those statistics, organizers of a recent behavioral health forum in Salt Lake City had a clear message for its audience: Businesses are not immune.{mprestriction ids="1,3"}

For example, stats show that two of three substance abusers use while at work.

“Sometimes I get the question, ‘John, why do we include businesses as a part of the conversation so much? It seems like every time we’re talking about mental health and substance use, we bring businesses into the equation,’” John Roble, president of the mountain states market for Cigna, said during Cigna Utah Behavioral Health Forum.

“And for me, the answer is really easy. Businesses are a big part of the solution and really mental health knows no boundaries. Mental health doesn’t stay at home while our bodies go to work. Mental health affects us in the workplace each and every day. It affects absenteeism and productivity and presenteeism and total medical costs, the ability to attract and retain talent. It affects the way that we build cultures inside organizations.”

Speakers at the forum cited statistics from the National Network of Depression Centers that indicate that absenteeism alone is estimated to cost U.S. employers nearly $23 billion annually. Drug abuse costs employers about $81 million each year. And of the 70 percent of substance abusers who remain employed, more than 42 percent admit that their work productivity suffers.

While much of the event, sponsored in part by The Enterprise, was designed to raise awareness about behavioral health and its ramifications, another focus was to suggest ways to help businesses better detect issues in their workplaces.

Doug Thomas, director of the Utah Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health, said the goal often is not prevention as much as early intervention. Of the one in five American adults with mental illnesses, half of the cases are diagnosable by age 14 and 75 percent are diagnosable by age 24. “So we know we have an opportunity to intervene,” Thomas said.

“What we’ve come to learn over the last few years is behavioral [health] has been, in the employer group space, more and more of an issue,” said Jason Youngblood, director of behavioral strategy at Cigna. “And what we understand is that behavioral conditions are actually a lot more prevalent than people thought.”

The problems are exacerbated when understanding that of the people with mental illness or substance abuse, only about 40 percent will ever receive treatment for their condition.

“There’s a lot of treatment for substance abuse,” said James Hewett, social worker manager at St. Mark’s Hospital. “If you need resources, they’re there for you. … It’s really about making sure that people know how to access those resources.”

However, speakers cautioned that before suggesting that a work colleague seek treatment, the colleague’s coworkers and supervisors should find ways to improve their ability to identify any behavioral health issues. Depression or anxiety can show itself in a worker’s edginess or restlessness, fatigue, impaired concentration, irritability, muscle aches, weight loss or weight gain, or difficulty sleeping. Anxiety disorders often coincide with physical illnesses such as stomachaches, headaches or neck and back pain. Issues with alcohol or drugs may be seen if a worker is making mistakes, having accidents and injuries, causing damage to workplace equipment, showing up late to work or otherwise losing time at work, or demonstrating a loss in productivity. Those problems can cause workplace relationships to deteriorate and staff morale to suffer.

Del Bircher, director of behavioral health at St. Mark’s Hospital, said helping put a worker on the right path can be as simple as asking the worker, “You don’t seem like yourself. What’s going on?” That is a responsibility “that falls on all of us as coworkers,” he said.

“As we’re working with individuals who are struggling with depression or anxiety, there are some concrete things that we can do as peers, as coworkers, as supervisors, to assist with treatment or helping an individual with a relationship to this issue,” Bircher said.

Youngblood spoke about the stigmas associated with behavioral health issues and how they can make a person hesitant to seek treatment. However, Hewett said that part of a discussion with a person suffering from those issues is emphasizing that treatment works.

“If we do have a person who is struggling with these things, it’s just educating them on the effectiveness of treatment,” he said. “A lot of times, when people are so depressed or anxious or they’re struggling with substance abuse, what’s one of the symptoms? Helplessness and hopelessness. In other words, ‘Nothing is going to help me. Therapy is crap. Come on, I’m doomed to just kind of live this life of misery.’ So having somebody that says, ‘No, treatment is effective, you can get help for this’ is huge.”

Like Thomas, Bircher said that catching and addressing the issues as early as possible can make a difference in the outcomes. “I think that we have to get better as coworkers, as supervisors, really changing our culture, so that we’re helping folks to be able to access services before it gets to the point that they need that direct inpatient kind of treatment,” Bircher said.

To boost awareness of behavioral health issues in the workplace, Hewett and Bircher are making presentations once or twice a month at local businesses.

“A lot of times we’re doing it in conjunction with their Health and Wellness Week,” Hewett told the forum audience. “It feels like we’re, like everybody in this room, just trying to get mental health awareness out there, help people know that treatment works, [that] treatment is helpful, don’t be afraid, don’t be scared to go and get that help if you know of somebody who needs the help or if you yourself need the help.”{/mprestriction}