When Mental Health Messaging Isn’t Working

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: It’s OK not to be OK.

How about these? It’s Mental Health Awareness Month. You have resources available to you. Sometimes it helps to talk to someone. You’re not alone.

Benefits teams have been recycling the same lines to promote mental health and substance-use benefits for a decade or more. And, while dozens of point solutions have emerged to support people’s mental health, engagement in those programs still lags.

Clearly, business-as-usual messaging isn’t working. Why not?

Understanding Mindset

No two people have the same relationship with mental health. Many of us were raised to know that “it’s OK not to be OK.” Others (myself included!) weren’t so lucky.

The stiff-upper-lip approach to mental health remains pervasive. Some of us were taught that positive thinking cures most mental health concerns. Some were told to “rub some dirt on it” and move on. Some learned that mental health issues are only real if they involve hearing voices. And still others see mental health challenges as challenges to their identities or dismiss them entirely as fiction.

The uniting theme here is another hackneyed term: stigma. Usually, stigma connotes negativity coming from others. But that’s not always the case. Even the word “stigma” traces back to Greek roots, meaning “I mark.”

Scholar Sara Ahmed imagines a family at a dinner table to explore how raising a problem can alienate the person raising it both from a group and oneself. “If you say, or do, or be anything that does not reflect the image of the happy family back to itself, the world becomes distorted. You become the cause of a distortion. You are the distortion you cause. Another dinner, ruined.”

In this example, and many others involving mental health, fears of group shaming and self-stigma—self-marking—prevent people from speaking up or seeking help. Communicating in standard ways about mental health programs can still shepherd people to the help they need. But research shows that real and perceived barriers to care discourage people from getting support even when coverage exists.

It’s possible to reorient people who would never seek mental health guidance otherwise. Employers and plan sponsors just need a different approach.

Understanding Barriers

The most common response to mental health and substance-use concerns is inaction. The average person takes 11 years from the onset of symptoms to seek professional help.

Why? For starters, nearly all treatment programs have a high barrier to entry (not to mention wait times amid a nationwide mental health provider shortage). For someone who needs, but feels squeamish about, professional mental health care, the barrier to entry is higher.

Put yourself in a hesitant person’s shoes. Inpatient and outpatient treatment is an intimidating thought. So are psychiatric care and medication. In-person or virtual therapy could be more approachable, but it’s a tough ask, because you’re not accustomed to discussing this stuff. Your EAP has a phone option—another degree of separation is nice—but it’s still telling a stranger about your feelings. No way. You’ll ask Google or ChatGPT, thank you very much.

Expand the Electorate

Many variables influence your organization’s EAP usage, but low rates are typical. Our clients often shuffle between EAP vendors searching for the secret sauce, no easy feat in a market saturated with point solutions, but rates remain static. While the vendor changed, the big ask of participants remained the same: Go spill your soul to a stranger.

Doing nothing about an ongoing mental health concern is a choice. So is rolling the dice with Google or ChatGPT. To make inroads, your organization could consider a no-barrier option that actually makes the web search valuable.

Segal health and communications consultants have been working with CredibleMind, a science-vetted digital platform that curates the digital mountain of mental health advice into a cluster of valuable resources. Users can take assessments, find exercises, watch videos, and read literature about the specific issue they searched, all while connecting them to benefit programs, like your EAP or medical plan, that provide further assistance.

CredibleMind searches are anonymous, but the search data provides valuable information to you and your consultants. While substance-use treatment might be low in your claims reports, a string of substance-related inquiries in CredibleMind might suggest that it’s time for a campaign on the subject. We have clients in the building trades, higher education, and corporate services using the platform with noticeable traction in mental health engagement.

Have a Crisis Communications Plan

A digital-only mental health resource brings more people into the fold, but specialized attention is required in dire situations. We’ve led multiple mental health campaigns for clients responding to suicides in their workplace or shootings on their campus. It’s grim work that requires tact.

Jarring events can lead even the most resistant people to seek mental health guidance. An advance plan can help your organization respond with the kindness and knowledge your people need, in the moment they need it most.

It shouldn’t be complicated. Resources for benefits leaders, a response plan for vendors, and a ready-to-send mailer detailing mental health support options cover the basics. Corporate and public sector organizations may want grief-counseling talking points for leaders and managers. Multiemployer welfare funds should provide an action checklist for Trustees and talking points for local labor and industry leaders.

Remember Yourself

Are you feeling OK right now? If not, practice what you’re preaching, and use your benefits!

If you’re doing fine, take a closer look anyway. Mental health benefits are a 365-day consideration for benefits professionals, but they’re under more of a microscope in May. That’s a great reason to go chat with your EAP. If nothing else, you’ll get a secret-shopper look at how everyone else experiences the program.