What if one of the biggest costs to the workplace could find a cure in the workplace?
Chances are, many if not most of your employees are impacted by mental illness. If not directly (1 in 5 Americans suffers from some kind of mental illness), then indirectly, as a spouse, family member, or close friend. And while victims and their families bear the biggest emotional burden, the workplace usually carries the biggest financial burden.
Yet we believe that the workplace could be the best place to address this epidemic, and without involving expensive healthcare plans.
- Mental illness is the #1 reported workplace disability and costs US businesses an estimated $220 billion annually.
- Employees struggling with untreated depression use up to 4 times the healthcare resources of their co-workers.
- An estimated 12 billion working days are lost due to mental illness every year.
- Lost productivity due to mental illness in the United States now costs more than $5,000 per employee, the highest in the world. That compares to costs in South Korea of just $180 per person.
And yet even minimal intervention, treatment, and support can produce significant benefits for the employee and the workplace. Not to mention their families.
The Statistics Are Grim
- Across the US, 1 in 5 people suffers from some kind of mental illness, and many with more than one.
- People with depression have a 40% higher risk of developing cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.
- 19% of U.S. adults with mental illness also experienced a substance use disorder in 2018 (9.2 million individuals).
- People with depression are 7 times more likely to be unemployed.
- High school students with significant symptoms of depression are more than twice as likely to drop out.
- Nearly 30% of people experiencing homelessness in the U.S. have a serious mental health condition.
- Nearly 2 million people with mental illness – including many veterans with PTSD or other mental health conditions – are booked into jails each year.
- 70% of youth in the juvenile justice system have a diagnosed mental illness.
- 41% of Veteran’s Health Administration patients have a diagnosed mental illness or substance use disorder.
- Mental illness triggers 12 million hospital visits every year.
- Around the world, approximately two-thirds of people with a mental disorder go untreated.
- When in jail, people with mental illness stay almost twice as long as other individuals facing similar charges.
- 1 in 4 people who die in officer-involved shootings are in a mental health crisis.
- More than 8 million adults provide unpaid care to family members who suffer from a mental illness, spending an average of 32 hours a week providing care.
Sources: The National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Lancet Commission, the National Institutes of Health, the Criminal Mental Health Project, the American Psychological Association.
