You probably offer your employees some form of health benefits. But is your benefits package robust enough to fully support your employees’ range of total health needs if they are to be fully present at work and resilient?
One often overlooked area of employee support is for parents of children with mental health concerns. A survey published earlier this year by Lyra Health found that over half of the more than 1,900 U.S. workers surveyed support a child with a mental health concern. Yet, the survey also found that “worker confidence in their employer-provided resources for their kids’ mental health is lagging behind companies’ investments in this area.”
This gap can mean your employees aren’t able to devote the time and attention necessary for peak performance, costing both you and them in the long run.
“Having a child with an untreated mental health issue is going to take parents out of the workplace. Their mind and energy will be elsewhere,” says Kendall Browne, PhD, senior program manager of Workforce Transformation at Lyra Health.
The state of our kids’ mental health
There are steps you can take to ensure your workers and their families are healthy and resilient. The first step is to have an appreciation of what mental health challenges youths in the U.S. are up against so it’s easier to relate to your employees who are parents.
Federal data indicates that in the 10 years leading up to the pandemic, young people in the U.S. experienced a 40% increase in feelings of persistent sadness and hopelessness, as well as thoughts of suicide. The pandemic exacerbated this trend, so that now, post-pandemic, the crisis of mental health among our youth remains a concern.
“We’re seeing really high rates of suicide and depression, and this has been going on for a while,” said psychologist Kimberly Hoagwood, PhD, a professor of child and adolescent
psychiatry at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, in a 2023 report on emerging mental health trends issued by the American Psychological Association.
Of particular note is mental health care around adolescents who experience gender dysphoria. The controversies around this rising phenomenon notwithstanding, the anxiety and depression this cohort of youth experiences is real, and potentially lethal.
A recent prospective study of 104 transgender and nonbinary teens found that when they were given appropriate mental health support, their odds of reporting moderate to severe depression were 60% lower than those who did not receive support. For suicidality, the odds were 73% lower in those who received care compared with those who did not. However, more than half of nearly 29,000 respondents to a survey of LGBTQ youths in the U.S. reported they could not access the mental health care they wanted.
Creating a support plan
Now you know that the likelihood your employees who are parents have concerns for their children’s mental health, keep in mind that a perceived lack of support in your workforce could result in high attrition rates. Lyra’s study found that over half (54%) of U.S. employees supporting a child with mental health challenges reported they were actively seeking a new employer over the next year, compared with 42% of workers not supporting a child with mental health concerns.
Further, 85% of the 250 HR and benefits managers surveyed claimed their organization’s mental health benefits would help any employee’s child with a mental health condition, while only 57% of the same workers surveyed agreed with that claim.
This differential demonstrates how, despite there being great strides made in ending the stigma around child and family mental health challenges, employers still have room to improve. The importance of doing so comes down to the bottom line.
The Lyra survey found that 1 in 3 of employees with children who had mental health concerns, reported that their own mental health suffered either “significantly” or “severely” as a result of their child’s own suffering. This had a direct impact on their ability to perform their tasks at work at a rate more than double that of workers not supporting a child with a mental health condition.
Meeting employees where they are
There are three places where employers can meet their employees’ mental health needs: upstream, midstream, and downstream approach to mental wellness empowers all stakeholders by meeting them where they are.
Upstream measures address leadership, midstream ones address employees, and downstream ones address situations. A midstream approach to helping parents in your organization who have children with mental health concerns is to create an employee resource group, or ERG.
These are affinity groups who can support and validate one another’s experiences, a critical part of helping your worker not feel isolated in their struggles.
By encouraging this cohort of workers with children in mental health crisis to meet regularly in the workplace and exchange ideas, you can help facilitate bonds of community and resilience, while also empowering them to develop their own pool of resources to supplement existing benefits.
Another midstream approach would be to investigate if your work environment is creating additional, unnecessary stress on your employees with children.
For example, would being more flexible with work hours be permissible, and not interfere with deliverables? This could mean the difference between a parent being able to schedule and attend appointments for their child and help them get the care they need.
Summary
You can’t anticipate every concern your employees have, but employers who think inclusively about their workers’ families can find it improves worker resilience, job satisfaction, and performance while potentially keeping attrition rates low.
References:
1 Lyra Health (2024, March 12). 2024 State of Workforce Mental Health Report. Https://www.Lyrahealth.com. Retrieved May 30, 2024, from https://www.lyrahealth.com/resources/guide/2024-state-of-workforce-mental-health-report/
2 Ibid.
3 CenBehavior Surveillance System (YRBSS). Retrieved May 30, 2024, from https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/index.htm ter for disease control and prevention (2023, March 27). 2021 YRBSS Data Highlights. Youth Risk
4 American Psychological Association (2023, January 1). Kids’ mental health is in crisis. Here’s what psychologists are doing to help. Apa.org. Retrieved May 30, 2024, from https://www.apa.org/monitor/2023/01/trends-improving-youth-mental-health
5 (2022). Mental Health Outcomes in Transgender and Nonbinary Youths Receiving Gender-Affirming Care. JAMA Network Open, 2022;5(2):e220978. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.0978
6 The Trevor Project (n.d.). 2023 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ Young People [pdf]. Retrieved June 3, 2024, from https://www.thetrevorproject.org/survey-2023/
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
Note: A version of this article was first published by IRMI in July 2024.