The Missed Opportunity of EAP.

There is a lot of chatter at the moment about the Australian federal government’s decision to return to providing Medicare rebates for 10 psychology sessions per year, removing access to the extra 10 rebatable sessions that were introduced in 2020 to meet the increased demand for mental health support due to the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. There has been widespread and justified criticism of the government’s decision, especially with regard to the established evidence base demonstrating that more than 10 psychology sessions are required to treat certain complex mental health disorders. There are many professional bodies around Australia continuing to advocate for more mental health support to be available and they are doing excellent work in continuing to raise their serious concerns surrounding this topic.

However, it is important to remember that Medicare is only one source of funding for psychological assistance and this current situation perhaps acts as a catalyst for the exploration of other funding sources available for Australians with mental healthcare needs. Currently, in addition to funding through Medicare, Australians are able to fund the services of a psychologist through private health insurance, the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the many workers compensation and road accident compensation schemes around Australia. Another, often not talked about, source of funding for psychological assistance, is employers, through Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs). An EAP is an employer-funded service where employees of an organization are provided with access to a range of services provided by mental health professionals. Most commonly, EAPs provide one-on-one counselling, however their services can also include mental health skills training, group counselling or debriefing, coaching and education about maintaining good mental health.

To date, EAPs have been an under-utilised service (Productivity Commission, 2020) and have been regarded by some as a service with a low value proposition. The authors, Menon, Knott, Farrer and Flatt touch on some of the reasons why EAPs may not be taken as seriously as other types of psychological assistance in their 2022 article reviewing the EAP sector. One of the major concerns they raise about the delivery of EAP services is the lack of regulation applied to this type of mental health treatment. In particular, they point out that there are no specific qualifications required to be an EAP Counsellor and there has historically been little to no measurement of the effectiveness of EAP services. They argue that this necessarily leads to a large variance in the quality of EAP services and undermines the confidence of users of such services (Menon et. al., 2022). The Productivity Commission (2020) similarly point out that EAPs provide an opportunity to improve the mental health of Australians, however a standardization of services and greater education for employers when choosing EAP services, were necessary, to capitalize upon this opportunity.

It is evident that there is room for improvement in the way that EAP services are delivered, however if these improvements could be achieved and the uptake of EAP increased, this may go some way to “filling the gap” left by the recent reduction in Medicare rebates for psychology sessions. According to the World Health Organisation (2022), 60% of the world’s population are in work and 15% of working age adults had a mental disorder in 2019. This means that the provision of EAP services through the employers of Australians would assist in addressing mental health concerns of hundreds of thousands of people in need. Whilst EAPs are unlikely to be the entire solution for the mental health crisis we are currently experiencing in this country, they potentially represent a “missed opportunity” for another avenue for supporting the mental health of Australians.

References

Menon, I., Knott, V., Farrer, L. and Flatt, N.(2022). Employee Assistance Programs Now and Into the Future. Inspych Magazine, Winter 2022.

Productivity Commission. (2020). Mental Health, Report no. 95, Canberra.

World Health Organisation and International Labour Organisation. (2022). Mental Health at Work: Policy Brief. Geneva.