Mental Health Coaching from Employee Assistance Program Improves Depression and Employee Work Outcomes: Longitudinal Results from CuraLinc Healthcare 2020-2022

Abstract

This was an applied naturalistic study examining changes in work and clinical outcomes after using individual mental health coaching services from an employee assistance program in the United States. The data was from 872 employee users at CuraLinc Healthcare during the years 2020 to 2022. The coaching intervention included individual sessions that focused on helping the employee with personal goal setting, problem-solving and skill-building. Over two-thirds of clients engaged in coaching for support with mental health issues (anxiety 47%, depression 12% or other 9%) while others had issues of stress (19%), personal relationships (marital 8%, family 4%) or work (2%). The coaching was delivered online and usually lasted about five weeks. The study features a Pre to Post single-group research design with self-report data collected at the start of use and again at follow-up after the last session. Repeated measures ANOVA tests found significant improvement with each result being a large size statistical effect for the outcomes: work absenteeism hours were reduced by 88% (d=0.42); work productivity level was increased by 32% (d=0.79); severity of depression symptoms was reduced by 66% (d=0.67). Exploratory analyses indicated that improvement on outcomes was experienced consistently across different sub-groups of clients based on age, gender, employer and service use factors. Having an absence problem was reduced from 42% of all clients at Pre to 7% at Post. Specific hours of missed work in the past month (measured by the Workplace Outcome Suite) changed from 6.7 hours at Pre to less than 1 hour at Post. Employees with a problem with their work productivity (i.e., low performance and lack of focus, measured by Stanford Presenteeism Scale) was reduced from 27% of clients at Pre to 1% at Post. Among the subsample of clients initially with a work productivity problem, 94% achieved “reliable recovery” with a larger than chance level increase in their productivity score. The average total hours of absence and lost work productivity combined in the past month was reduced from 52.8 hours at Pre to 14.5 hours at Post. The percentage of all employees at-risk for clinical depression (measured by the PHQ-9) was reduced from 20% of coaching clients at Pre to zero at Post. Within this at-risk subgroup, 85% achieved “reliable recovery” such that the differences in their scores was greater than at chance level. Coaching services thus appear to be a viable alternative to counseling for employees interested in more goal-oriented, solution-focused type of support.