Employers struggle as mental health needs grow

Americans, shaken from news of the Uvalde and Buffalo massacres, are looking to their employers for help.

Three out of 10 employees who were emotionally affected by recent mass shootings have sought out their organization's employee assistance program or plan to do so at least in part because of the events, according to a Morning Consult survey of 2,226 working adults for Bloomberg News.

The shootings follow the pandemic and war in Ukraine, both of which have resulted in an acceleration of requests for already-overwhelmed mental health care practitioners.

“We do tend to see an increase in utilization around national tragedies,” said Dr. Dana Udall, chief clinical officer at Headspace Health, a digital mental health services provider. “And we have definitely seen an uptick in recent weeks.”

According to a survey from the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans and separate research published in the Journal of Insurance Regulation, average EAP utilization rates are typically below 10%, although they have increased several percentage points during the pandemic as more employees sought help for a variety of issues, including — but not limited to — mental health.

But employers' support is coming up short. A third of workers whose companies offer an EAP or insurance coverage for mental health care think their employer isn't doing enough to support their mental health. That number is double for workers whose employers don't offer either benefit.

Americans' mental health has worsened during the pandemic, a situation made even more dire by a chronic shortage of licensed providers. Federal data shows that 3 out of 4 U.S. counties have a severe shortage of mental health providers, and