Brief Counseling Services from an Employee Assistance Program: Descriptive Profile of Over 100,000 Cases at AllOne Health 2020-2024 in the United States
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Abstract
The paper profiles the characteristics of 101,927 users of brief psychological counseling. Employee Assistance program (EAP) provider AllOne Health made available archival data from their business during 2020 to 2024 for 5,706 employers across 8 industries in the United States. Employer size varied from under 250 workers to over 2.8 million (median 2,407). User age averaged 40 years (range under 20 to over 70; 5% children; 3% retiree age). Mental health issues were the most common presenting issue (45%), followed by personal relationships and family issues (32%), personal life stressors (13%), work and workplace crisis issues (7%) and substance use issues (2%). The typical case used 3.4 sessions of counseling over a 44-day period. Time between each session was about 2 weeks. Clients chose different modalities for using therapy: 38% in-person; 16% telephone; 46% online video. Exploratory tests found mostly trivial size differences between clinical use factors (issue, sessions used, duration, modality) and context factors (client age, year of use, use during COVID-19 pandemic, employer industry and size). Users of service subtypes of “In-the- Moment” counseling (n = 10,027) and Life Coaching (n = 1,153) were also examined and found to be distinguished mostly by differences in the mix of presenting issues. This is one of the largest sample size studies ever done on this topic. Limitations, comparisons to past user profile studies and implications for research are discussed. Appendix of 28 case examples with different kinds of issues is provided.
