Even those not dealing with illness or the loss of loved ones have often faced financial pressures, isolation, and the impossible task of juggling caregiving and professional responsibilities. Remote work, while bringing a welcome increase in flexibility, has also allowed our jobs to intrude even further on our personal lives, leading to rising stress, languishing and burnout.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the share of U.S. adults reporting symptoms of anxiety disorder and/or depressive disorder rose from 11% in the first half of 2019 to more than 40% in January 2021.

Employers living through this Great Resign period recognize the growing issue, and many are looking for support systems — beyond employee assistance programs and mental health care coverage designed to address more severe situations — that can preemptively help their workers before serious problems emerge. In most cases, fortunately, it’s not necessary to reinvent the wheel. With a few tweaks, a robust corporate well-being program can enable employees to improve their physical and mental health.

Following are three tips for incorporating a greater mental health focus into your employee well-being program.

1. Solicit employee input

Regular anonymous pulse surveys can give you a big-picture view of your organization’s overall mental health climate and help you identify any workplace culture issues that may be affecting employee morale and mental health. (It goes without saying that appropriate reporting structures are required for any type of harassment, discrimination, or other toxic behavior, but you’ll also want to know about potential lower-level stressors that don’t rise to the seriousness of requiring a formal complaint.)

In addition to executing periodic surveys, you should seek out input from individuals to make sure their specific concerns are being addressed. One way to do this is to incorporate well-being into the standard employee review process. Broadening the discussion beyond individual job performance to include questions about whether the employee feels valued and heard, and whether the organization’s well-being benefits are meeting their needs, can both demonstrate that the company cares about its people and help improve future benefit offerings.

2. Address lifestyle health issues that diminish well-being

Mental and physical health are inextricably linked, and sustainable improvements can’t be achieved with a siloed approach. For example, stress and anxiety can lead to lost sleep, emotional eating, substance use, and other unhealthy behaviors that ultimately lead to physical ailments, and conversely, addressing the unhealthy lifestyle choices that lead to chronic conditions such as obesity, hypertension, and diabetes can have a considerable impact on mental health and well-being.

So to fully support mental health, a well-being program must help employees develop long-term positive lifestyle habits that will lead to significant improvements in physical health.

A good mental health measurement component to use in your well-being program is the National Institutes of Health’s PROMIS (Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System). Newtopia, for example, uses PROMIS measures for resilience, mood, anxiety, sleep, and energy in its personalized habit change programs alongside the tracking of more traditional factors such as exercise and nutrition.

3. Take advantage of virtual tools

Most of us have grown accustomed to turning to our smartphones for solutions, so it’s not surprising that many people are embracing apps — for meditation, mindfulness and relaxation, for example — to improve their mental health as well. When a human connection (or a trained mental health professional) is needed, many companies are offering their employees virtual therapy and counseling sessions, either from emerging digital-only providers or from traditional providers who have embraced telehealth during the pandemic.

These types of virtual tools are convenient and accessible, but it’s important to remember that they are most effective when they’re incorporated into a holistic whole-person care support program that comprehensively addresses physical, emotional, and mental well-being, rather than simply offering employees a grab bag of individual solutions that they can pick and choose from.

A win-win

The mental and emotional scars of the pandemic will likely get worse before they get better, and last long after employees return to the office. Incorporating mental health into your company’s well-being program can help your employees thrive and achieve their potential. It’s a win-win investment that leads not only to enhanced individual health and happiness but to greater organizational effectiveness thanks to reduced burnout, higher productivity, and improved retention.

The post 3 Tips for Incorporating Mental Health Into Your Corporate Well-Being Program appeared first on Medika Life.

Both are rising at an unsustainable rate, with nearly half of the U.S. population suffering from an expensive chronic condition. COVID-19 has demonstrated the importance of prevention and how vulnerable we all are. It also sets the stage for a further uptick in noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes and heart disease due to unhealthy habits that have become worse during the pandemic. 

Health insurers are footing much of that ticket when it comes to covering the costs.

This will have tragic consequences. According to the World Health Organization, noncommunicable diseases kill 41 million people each year, accounting for 71% of all deaths globally. 

Despite all our medical advances, our “sick care” system will not be able to handle the waves of noncommunicable disease set to wash over America. Americans are at risk. So are employers and insurers who believe that they can solve the ills of their members by plugging holes in the boat. COVID-19 is the tip of the public health iceberg that could sink the boat entirely.

Offering ‘sick care’ doesn’t do the trick

The current system waits until we become ill before it kicks into action — instead of inspiring us to stay healthy and preventing us from becoming sick. There’s a missed opportunity to address potential issues with preventive care, with people often receiving diagnostic treatment from providers after their health problems emerge. 

To some degree, this is a product of market dynamics; after all, the most lucrative medical treatments are delivered when health problems are most pressing. But this approach jeopardizes individuals’ well-being and places the cost on health insurers — many of whom are employers.

Chronic disease in particular is costly for employers, in terms of direct physical, mental and emotional health costs and lost productivity. For U.S. payers, the average annual health care cost per member is $3,400 for a healthy employee; that figure rises to $15,000 to $20,000 for an employee with diabetes or heart disease, according to an Aetna study. 

Health care spending is projected to rise more than 5% annually over the next decade and accounts for about one-fifth of the U.S. economy — and much of that spending can be attributed to chronic conditions that could be managed by helping people make healthier lifestyle choices.

Preventive care today

The medical community recognizes that the costs of late-stage care is best addressed sooner to create a more sustainable health system. That’s why everyone from providers to insurers must reconsider preventive care.

Preventive care matters because it can lower health care costs by preventing, reversing, or slowing a disease before it becomes urgent. There are already many public health campaigns encouraging everything from quitting smoking to routine checkups to the importance of mental wellbeing. 

Despite these efforts, a 2019 report by the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System found that much work is still needed to encourage preventive action in the U.S.

Even though four in five Americans have health insurance, one in four didn’t get a routine checkup last year. Nearly 3.31 million people reported that they have never had a checkup in their life. These alarming statistics were captured before COVID-19 discouraged many from going to the doctor, so we can expect both 2020 and 2021 numbers to be significantly worse, leading to further substantial increases in chronic sickness and costs for an already overburdened health system.

But preventive care means much more than just annual checkups, vaccinations, and screenings to catch disease at an early stage. More importantly, it means working with individuals proactively to help them establish healthy lifestyle habits that will reduce their risk of developing chronic disease in the first place.

The health that corporate America pays for today is backward. The focus on footing the bill for sick care for employees (or members) — instead of offering primary lifestyle prevention to keep our people healthy — costs individuals, businesses, and society a fortune and is completely unsustainable. It’s the equivalent of working to restore loyalty to an unhappy customer instead of focusing on delivering a world-class experience from the first touchpoint and keeping customers happy and loyal along the entire customer lifecycle.

In a savvy world, preserving the best aspects of our current pharmaceutical-and-surgery-based crisis intervention and disease care system while refocusing our public health systems on primary prevention is a smarter investment for companies that offer employees health benefits. Programs and solutions would address an individual’s health needs well before they reached the most damaging and threatening stages. The experience would be inspiring, convenient, and personalized for each individual, while health care providers would be compensated for positive outcomes for their patients. Everyone would win. 

That sounds an awful lot more like ‘health’ care.

Private-sector saviors

There have certainly been efforts to explore this possibility. Decades ago, President Nixon warned that the U.S. health care system was unsustainable and would, without prompt administrative and legislative action, break down. Every successive administration has promised similar revolutionary changes, but we still face many of the same challenges.

Corporate employers and both private and public payers need to take the initiative in moving us toward a health system that works for everyone to keep healthy people healthy. After all, 49% of the population get their insurance from an employer. 

Employers have the ability to offer preventive health programs that help employees avoid disease and embrace healthy lifestyle choices. Benefits should go beyond generic gym membership discounts and proactively encourage behaviors that prevent disease and foster health.

Forward-looking companies have long sought to demonstrate their commitment to employee health and resilience, using their benefit and incentive programs to assist in recruitment and retention efforts as well as lower health costs. Today, that commitment is more important than ever.

As the long-term health outlook for the general population grows more serious, employers can deliver the preventive health care measures that the current system hasn’t been able to sufficiently provide. They can bring together the best of human and digital technology to promote healthy habits among at-risk employees, drive more sustainable outcomes, and lower costs.

Business leaders need to take action and put employees’ well-being first. Maybe it’s not the ‘system’ that should heal itself; rather, the corporations that are the paying customers. Health and care aren’t just two words. They need to be the guiding principles that accelerate the transformative changes our country needs.

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