How to Respect Your Employees’ Privacy While Supporting Their Mental Health
While awareness of mental health concerns is perhaps higher than ever, mental health is still an incredibly sensitive and personal subject for many. Privacy fears may deter some employees from using their employer-sponsored mental health benefits. For example, some employees may fear an employer-sponsored therapist will report information they share with the therapist back to their employer. Employees may also worry that revealing mental health challenges like suicidal thoughts or panic attacks could result in losing their job.
When discussing or introducing mental health resources, it is crucial that employers address these privacy concerns up-front. Employers should emphasize that everything an employee tells their therapist is confidential, and will not be shared with their employer or impact their position. Educating employees about HIPAA may be helpful if they remain skeptical. You can find a full summary of the HIPAA Privacy Rule here. In essence, the HIPAA Privacy Rule dictates that therapists may only break employee confidentiality when:
The client presents an imminent danger to themself or others. (For example, if the client states that they plan to go home and physically abuse another person after a session, their therapist must report this to the authorities.)
The therapist suspects child, elder or dependent adult abuse.
The therapist receives a court order requiring them to reveal certain information.
The client asks them to share! (For example, a client may want their primary care provider to speak with their therapist about certain treatment options.)
Finally, employers should be careful to remind employees that while they support and care for their mental health, the company’s HR team and other leaders are not mental health providers. You cannot directly help employees tackle their mental health concerns, but you can (and should!) set them up with the right resources.
The Importance of Robust Employee Mental Health Benefits
Fact: Even employees with great health insurance lack access to mental healthcare. Only about half of mental health providers in the U.S. accept any insurance, and as a result, those who do often aren’t accepting new clients. Even pre-pandemic, 60% of employees who sought mental health care had to pay for it out-of-pocket.
Many employers already offer an Employee Assistance Program (or “EAP”), which is often included as part of the employer’s life or health insurance plan. However, these legacy products are outdated, and aren’t built for today’s employees. This is made clear by their dismally low engagement rates: the national average for EAP use within a company continues to be just 3% to 4%. Thankfully, there are new mental health benefits of the market built specifically for today’s employees.
A mental health benefit in 2022 should provide an easy-to-use, digital interface to meet employees where they are. It should also treat employees as individuals, considering their preferences and offering a broad range of culturally competent, licensed therapists, ideally for multiple covered therapy sessions. Lastly, a great mental health benefit should offer supplemental supportive tools and content to remind employees that the benefit is available to them, and to help support them in between therapy sessions.
Adequately supporting your employees’ mental health requires a multifaceted approach, and robust mental health benefits alone are not sufficient. However, they are necessary to ensure your employees are well supported when they need it most.
