EVOLVE Business and Professional Magazine August 2020 | Page 12

I think sometimes people wait until way too long and they end up having
to be hospitalized instead of getting the counseling, peer counseling and
the stuff they need to get through their week and their day.”
social, financial and emotional health. In particular, we offer a
variety of employee benefits related to mental health, including an
Employee Assistance Program, virtual psychologist/psychiatrist
visits through a telemedicine provider, second opinion consultation
service and services to help employees find the appropriate care.”
The commitment at Boston Whaler goes beyond just offering
programs, according to spokesperson Traci Davis.
“Boston Whaler understands that workplace wellness needs to
play a significant role in their employee engagement strategies,”
Davis said. “In fact, it is a part of its culture.”
But for many smaller businesses, the options are more limited,
according to Holloway.
“A lot of companies will have special programs that employees
can use to access local counseling services,” he said. “We’re more of
a resource for small businesses.”
Open Door operates the Port Orange Counseling Center,
Daytona Beach Counseling Center, Ormond Beach Counseling
Center and The Wellspring NSB and works with companies that
don’t have formal wellness programs, as well as maintaining
counseling relationships with other business organizations,
churches and non-profits.
To make counseling services accessible to all, Open Door offers a
sliding scale payment program.
“Our policy is not to turn away people when they come to see
us,” Holloway said. “We let people decide how much they can
afford to pay.”
For Holloway, that means working outside the system a little bit.
“We just adopt the policy that when people come in for
counseling, we’ll find a way to do that,” he said.
Holloway said that allows therapists to focus on the patient
rather than make a quick diagnosis to satisfy an insurance provider.
“Anytime you work with third-party payers, there is pressure to
diagnose to get paid,” he said.
Finding ways to expand access to mental health services is also
something Jim Terry, service line administrator for adult and child
psychiatry at Halifax Health, is working on.
“Some employers have done a really good job of expanding
their benefits,” he said. “I don’t think we get
the same level of service for the mental health
system as you get for medical care.”
Terry, who has been in the mental health
field for 40 years, said the real need is to get
insurance companies to treat mental health
Jim Terry services the same as traditional hospital care.
“I think we can expand our services by allowing more access
to non-high end care,” he said. “I think sometimes people wait
way too long and they end up having to be hospitalized instead of
getting the counseling, peer counseling and the stuff they need to
get through their week and their day.”
Terry said while on the adult side Halifax Health currently only
offers in-patient services, they are looking at expanding into the
out-patient area.
“That is because there are just not enough out-patient services
available in our area,” he said. “We’ve also talked about doing
partial programs, where people can come in during the day and get
the benefit of being at the hospital but can go home at night.”
Another issue facing employer-sponsored mental health services
is getting the right mental health professionals in the right places to
treat those in need.
“When I first came out of school, and that was 40 years ago, I
did what was called crisis counseling. The problem with that is the
people who did the job were the least experienced. You had the
lowest skilled people dealing with your highest need people. We
still have that problem today,” he said. “We’re not paying enough to
get people to want to do that job.”
The need for employee mental health services is perhaps even
stronger today as society deals with the upheavals caused by the
Covid-19 pandemic.
“Initially everyone was worried about people that live alone and
are isolated,” Holloway said. “What I couldn’t really anticipate was
how stressful quarantine was going to be on families with small
children. It is much more stressful on small family groups when
their energy is pulled between taking care of children and trying
to work.”
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