Happify Health, a mental health benefits provider, has designed a new program for employees and health plan members to remotely access mental health resources to meet the recent surge in demand.
Happify Connect is a part of the organization’s selfcare platform and allows employees to connect with mental health care that is more conducive to the current work-from-home environment. The program directs employees to mental health resources, including self-guided tools within the Happify platform, higher-touch care through integrated partners such as online therapy and a mental health provider directory.
“We’ve always been about destigmatized delivery of support for [employees] in their lives,” says Patrick Burke, Happify Health's head of healthcare. “As individuals mental health is so dynamic that we need different things at different times in our lives.”
The program interface can be easily integrated with other individual employer and mental health plans.
Happify Connect has also partnered with digital technology healthcare company Talkspace, to provide psychotherapy services to employer clients.
One in five people will experience a mental illness within a given year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, 70% never seek treatment. Emergency situations, such as the global COVID-19 pandemic, can cause people to experience immediate psychological distress, hopelessness, and sleep issues, according to the World Health Organization.
“The numbers have always said that more employees would benefit from having a mental health benefit provided,” Burke says. “That 70% is a really unique population because that’s where the access issues and stigma issues abound. That’s changed a lot with the pandemic in terms of the openness of the employers that we’re talking to today.”
