Benefits professionals know that behavioral health has long been eclipsed by physical ailments within the larger context of health plan management, even with mental health parity laws. That’s largely because there are more tangible treatment options for colds, flus, accidents and diseases, which represent low-hanging fruit for cost management.
But it’s not nearly as easy to treat or manage mental health and substance abuse issues, even though the need to find meaningful solutions has never been greater. Unchecked mental illness, for example, costs the U.S. more than $105 billion a year in lost productivity, according to the National Council for Behavioral Health. The group also notes that 35 million work days are lost every year as a result of this problem, while more than half of managers have no training to recognize the telltale signs of mental illness or substance abuse.
