'De-stressing the Workforce'
Occupational Health, 01 Jan 04

Employee assistance programmes and counselling are increasingly popular mental health interventions. But how do they actually work in practice? By Tim Cuthell

Employee assistance programmes (EAPs) have become increasingly familiar in the UK since they first evolved from the welfare counselling services of the 1970s. EAPs play a central role in stress management by offering a range of services to employees and, usually, their relatives.

Unlike their counterparts in the US, UK EAPs are almost entirely used on a self-referral basis, with the employee or their family member contacting the service directly for help.

This reactive use of counselling and advisory services is generally accepted as a positive intervention that will help users to understand their problems and formulate strategies and actions to resolve them. By doing so, the support provided by EAPs can help to reduce stress, whether it is in the workplace, at home, or in both.

However, self-referral often happens only once a problem has grown into a crisis, and relies on the individual recognising that they have a problem. This severely restricts the role that an EAP can play because many people who would benefit from help do not, or will not, recognise that they have a problem and are, therefore, unlikely to contact their EAP – in fact, only between 5 and 15 per cent of employees do so in the UK.

Read full article