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Employee Assistance Program Counseling in the U.S. Education Industry: Clinical and Work Outcome Risks and Results for 8,020 Cases at CuraLinc Healthcare

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2024-03-26
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This applied study explored the role of behavioral health issues among workers in the education industry in the United States. The education industry accounts for about 1 in every 10 employees in the total U.S. workforce in year 2024. Recent data on number of worker, number of employers, worker age, gender, private/public sector, union representation, compensation, and safety from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is also presented to provide a larger context for this industry. The EAP study featured client data collected over a 7-year period from employee users of counseling or coaching from a single national EAP business in the United States (CuraLinc Healthcare). The larger EAP sample included 85,432 clients who worked at 2,679 different employers. The EAP user sample for the education industry included 8,020 employee clients (9% of the full sample) who worked at 217 different employers. Longitudinal data at 30-days post use was obtained from 9,063 cases in the full sample of which 977 were from the education industry. The education industry client sample was 72% women and 28% men, average age of 40 years, 92% used the EAP for counseling (8% for coaching), 99% were voluntary self-referrals (1% were formally referred to use counseling by their manager at work), 59% saw their counselor in- person at a local office and another 41% connected remotely via online video) and the typical treatment episode lasted about 7 weeks (48 days). The reasons why employees in the healthcare industry used the EAP was to address issues of mental health (49%), stress and personal life issues (27%), marriage and family issues (15%), work-related issues (7%) and substance use problems (2%). The EAP user profile for workers in education – compared to the other industries – was the highest in use of coaching and lowest in use of formal management referrals. Education industry clients were average in the mix of in-person or video contact modalities, the duration of use episode and similar on most of the presenting issues but was the lowest for substance misuse issues. When starting to use the EAP many of the cases in education reported having clinical level symptoms on standardized measures for anxiety disorder (44% at-risk), depression disorder (29% at-risk), alcohol misuse disorder (11% at-risk) and low work productivity (48% at problem level). Among those cases initially at clinical risk status on outcomes in the total sample, the vast majority had recovered to no longer be at-risk after use. Hours of lost work productive time changed from 63 hours lost per month to 25 hours for those cases initially at a problem level on this outcome. The hours of restored work productivity was estimated to be a $2,237 value per month per case who initially had this problem. Most of these EAP use profile factors and outcome improvement results were also found at similar levels for the other seven industries.

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