Recapping the DSM-5s criticisms. How did we get here?

May 9, 2013 By

Let’s recap the DSM. How did we get here?

We wrote about the his­tory of the DSM in an ear­lier blog post (http://www.healthyworkplaces.info/a-brief-history-of-the-dsm/). But it’s worth recap­ping some of the ‘good’ and the ‘bad.’ It’s not enough to say the DSM is sci­en­tif­i­cally unsound. We need to delve deeper than this and seek ‘full dis­clo­sure’ from critics.

What is inspir­ing Allen Frances, who was chair of the DSM-IV Task Force, to be so highly crit­i­cal and lack­ing any con­tri­tion for his remarks? What is fuel­ing boy­cotts of the DSM, includ­ing the most sig­nif­i­cant of these “Boy­cott DSM-5” (http://boycott5committee.com/)?

Susan Whit­bourne, PhD, has pro­vided a nice sum­mary in the Psy­chol­ogy Today arti­cle “Ful­fill­ment at any age” (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201305/what-the-dsm-5-changes-mean-you) and we’ll take acknowl­edged lib­erty to sum­ma­rize her key points here.

DSM-5 the good?

  • DSM-5 is elim­i­nat­ing the five “axis” diag­nos­tic sys­tem that requires clin­i­cians to rate clients accord­ing to cri­te­ria other than their cen­tral psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­or­der, thereby free­ing DSM users from under­stand­ing “axis” (dimen­sion?) and the rather strange com­bi­na­tion of per­son­al­ity dis­or­ders and “men­tal retar­da­tion” into one grouping.
  • Elim­i­nat­ing the col­lec­tion of unre­lated dis­or­ders that ‘orig­i­nate in childhood.’
  • Stig­ma­tiz­ing is less­ened by replac­ing stig­ma­tiz­ing ter­mi­nol­ogy such as “Men­tal Retar­da­tion” with more accu­rate, some would say polit­i­cally accu­rate, terms (“Men­tal Retar­da­tion” is now “Intel­lec­tual Dis­abil­ity”, “Hypochon­dri­a­sis” is now “Ill­ness Anx­i­ety Disorder”).
  • “Autis­tic Dis­or­der” (now “Autis­tic Spec­trum Dis­or­der”) and “Asperger’s Dis­or­der” are elim­i­nated as diag­noses. The changes have ral­lied foul cries from many groups, but the move towards a spec­trum con­cept poten­tially drowns out these cries.
  • Karen notes “another good set of changes involves reor­ga­niz­ing and elim­i­nat­ing some dis­or­ders that no longer made sense in the new frame­work” cit­ing “Obses­sive Com­pul­sive Dis­or­der” fit­ting into its own group­ing and not included with the anx­i­ety dis­or­ders. PTSD is now part of “Trauma and Stressor-Related Dis­or­ders”, thereby ensur­ing the shared nature of these disorders.

New guide­lines assist in eval­u­at­ing sui­ci­dal­ity. This will pro­vide clin­i­cians with a poten­tially more reli­able and valid means of assess­ing risk of self-harm. It will also pro­vide a bet­ter foun­da­tion for ensur­ing com­pli­ance with our pro­fes­sional ethics duties.

And speak­ing of “Schiz­o­phre­nia”, clin­i­cians may rate the sever­ity of a client’s symp­toms in more mean­ing­ful ways (note, we can­not say we agree with Karen’s trite remark ‘this is par­tic­u­larly good news for the legions of under­grad­u­ates who no longer have to mem­o­rize these some­what con­fus­ing terms’).

DSM-5 the bad!

Includ­ing “Mild Neu­rocog­ni­tive Impair­ment” has a very real poten­tial to pathol­o­gize nor­mal age-related cog­ni­tive changes and “lead peo­ple with slight mem­ory prob­lems to rush to the con­clu­sion that they have demen­tia.” We also note the rise of reported concussion-related head injury in sports and ques­tion whether the neu­rocog­ni­tive impair­ment in these sit­u­a­tions would war­rant clas­si­fi­ca­tion as a men­tal disorder.

A gen­eral broad­en­ing of the “noso­log­i­cal net..making what’s nor­mal seem sick.” For exam­ple, broad­en­ing the diag­noses of major depres­sive dis­or­der (elim­i­nat­ing the “bereave­ment exclu­sion” where a griev­ing per­son has 2 months to expe­ri­ence sever symp­toms of depres­sion and not be pathologized.

Two new depres­sive dis­or­ders are intro­duced that some believe pathol­o­gizes tem­per tantrums: Pre­men­strual dys­phoric dis­or­der” and “Dis­rup­tive mood dys­reg­u­la­tion disorder.”

The cat­e­go­riza­tion sys­tem of per­son­al­ity dis­or­ders remains unchanged despite ral­ly­ing cries for a dimen­sional system.

The major­ity of child­hood dis­or­ders are reclas­si­fied, and some cri­te­ria broad­ened to the point of poten­tially includ­ing more chil­dren with mild or bor­der­line symp­toms (e.g. Atten­tion Deficit Hyper­ac­tiv­ity Dis­or­der). “The prob­lem with the rela­bel­ing, accord­ing to crit­ics, is that it places empha­sis on the bio­log­i­cal causes of ADHD, min­i­miz­ing the behav­ioral con­tri­bu­tions. As a result, the crit­ics main­tain, peo­ple with this diag­no­sis may turn to phar­ma­co­log­i­cal inter­ven­tions instead of what many believe are the more effec­tive (and side effect free) behav­ioral strategies.”

Sage words

As Karen remarks in clos­ing her commentary:

My advice is that you keep an open mind as you read arti­cles in the press or in the self-help sec­tion of the Inter­net (this blog included).  You have the abil­ity to eval­u­ate the evi­dence rel­e­vant to your own con­cerns. As they say, “talk to your doc­tor,” but in this case I would add “talk to your psy­chol­o­gist.” We’re listening.

————————————————————————————

How can we help?

The Healthy Work­places blog is brought to you by Home­wood Human Solu­tions. We are part of Schlegel Health Care, a family-owned health care orga­ni­za­tion with a focus on men­tal health and addic­tions, employee and fam­ily assis­tance, dis­abil­ity man­age­ment, and long-term care for older adults. How can we help?

Home­wood Human Solutions

Nation­wide EFAP and Dis­abil­ity Pro­grams

Home­wood Human Solu­tions™ offers a one-of-a-kind approach to the mar­ket: the high­est qual­ity of clin­i­cal sup­port and inter­ven­tion avail­able within the EFAP indus­try, and an unmatched con­tin­uum of ser­vices — span­ning health pro­mo­tion, men­tal health and addic­tions treat­ment, and prevention-focused work-life coun­selling services.

Home­wood Dis­abil­ity Treat­ment Program

Effec­tive dis­abil­ity man­age­ment for men­tal ill­ness must go beyond “man­ag­ing” dis­abil­ity to include both inpa­tient and out­pa­tient treat­ment. Treat­ment goals must incor­po­rate strate­gies for suc­cess­ful work rein­te­gra­tion to min­i­mize recur­rence and relapse.

The Home­wood Dis­abil­ity Treat­ment Pro­gram (HDTP) com­bines the ser­vices avail­able through the Home­wood Health Cen­tre – a nation­ally rec­og­nized men­tal health and addic­tion treat­ment cen­tre with the best national net­work of skilled men­tal health and addic­tion treat­ment pro­fes­sion­als through Home­wood Human Solu­tionsTM.

Home­wood Health Centre

Nation­ally rec­og­nized men­tal health and addic­tion facil­i­ties

Home­wood Health Cen­tre is Canada’s unsur­passed med­ical leader in addic­tion and men­tal health treat­ment, pro­vid­ing highly spe­cial­ized psy­chi­atric ser­vices to all Cana­di­ans. We are a 312-bed, Sched­ule 1 facil­ity under the Ontario Men­tal Health Act. We oper­ate nine pro­grams treat­ing a range of men­tal health and addic­tion issues.

Home­wood Health Cen­tre is located in Guelph, Ontario.

Schlegel Vil­lages

Con­tin­uum of care facil­i­ties for older adults (long-term care and retire­ment homes)

Schlegel Vil­lages are designed, built and man­aged by the Schlegel fam­ily of Kitch­ener, Ontario. Our motto: “It Takes a Vil­lage to Care” lives on.

Cana­dian owned and oper­ated, our Vil­lages ben­e­fit from the Schlegel fam­ily hav­ing over 40 years of direct expe­ri­ence co-owning, man­ag­ing and oper­at­ing Long Term Care and Retire­ment Com­mu­ni­ties in Ontario. There are eleven Schlegel Vil­lages hous­ing approx­i­mately 2500 seniors. Each Vil­lage has a Long Term Care com­po­nent, with Full Ser­vice Retire­ment Liv­ing, Assisted Care, Mem­ory Care and Inde­pen­dent Liv­ing options being added in stages. The first Schlegel Vil­lage opened in 1998 in Guelph.

Have you vis­ited our Pin­ter­est site? We have many, many more info­graph­ics to peruse. Have a look here!

We’re on Google Plus!


Com­ments? Thoughts or resources to share?

.

NOTE: The con­tent and opin­ions offered in Healthy Work­places blog posts do not nec­es­sar­ily reflect the for­mal stance of Home­wood Human Solu­tions, unless oth­er­wise iden­ti­fied. We bring this infor­ma­tion for­ward in the inter­ests of openly shar­ing val­ued infor­ma­tion in this time of fast-growing online con­ver­sa­tions and knowledge.

 

 

DSM-5: Highlights of changes from DSM-4

April 24, 2013 By

First, a high­light of some of the changes in the DSM-5 from DSM-IV.

High­lights of changes:

  • A devel­op­men­tal focus. The DSM-5 re-orders dis­or­ders accord­ing to the age they’re most likely to appear, begin­ning with neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal dis­or­ders that occur most often in child­hood and end­ing with dis­or­ders asso­ci­ated with old age, such as neu­rocog­ni­tive dis­or­ders. The dis­or­ders’ descrip­tions also describe how they may present dif­fer­ently through­out the life span.
  • New diag­nos­tic cri­te­ria. Some of the diag­nos­tic cri­te­ria will change. A new dis­or­der called autism spec­trum dis­or­der, for exam­ple, col­lapses what were pre­vi­ously four sep­a­rate dis­or­ders — autism, Asperger’s dis­or­der, child­hood dis­in­te­gra­tive dis­or­der and per­va­sive devel­op­men­tal dis­or­der — into one with dif­fer­ent lev­els of symp­tom severity.
  • Sim­i­larly, the DSM-5 elim­i­nates the pre­vi­ous version’s four sub­types of schiz­o­phre­nia. And the sec­tion on bipo­lar dis­or­ders now empha­sizes changes in activ­ity and energy as well as mood dur­ing manic and hypo­manic episodes as a way of facil­i­tat­ing ear­lier detec­tion and increas­ing diag­nos­tic accuracy.
  • A move toward “dimen­sional” mea­sures. While the DSM-5 still lists sep­a­rate dis­or­ders, the new man­ual will also incor­po­rate dimen­sional mea­sures of sever­ity for many dis­or­ders. That shift is based on the real­iza­tion that the lines between many dis­or­der cat­e­gories blur over the life span and that symp­toms attrib­uted to a sin­gle dis­or­der may also appear in other dis­or­ders, just with dif­fer­ent lev­els of sever­ity. With the new autism spec­trum dis­or­der, for exam­ple, clin­i­cians can choose among three lev­els of sever­ity in the dimen­sions of social com­mu­ni­ca­tion and inter­ac­tion and repet­i­tive behav­ior and inter­ests. That shift rep­re­sents a first step toward think­ing about psy­chopathol­ogy in a new way, says Hop­wood. “There hasn’t been much evi­dence that dis­or­ders are cat­e­gor­i­cal, both in terms of being cat­e­gor­i­cally dis­tinct from each other and from nor­mal behav­ior,” he says. The rea­son so many peo­ple have more than one psy­chi­atric dis­or­der is because many dis­or­ders reflect prob­lems in the same dimen­sion, or sys­tem, he says, adding that this approach means think­ing about what dis­or­ders have in com­mon instead of what makes them different.
  • Increased empha­sis on cul­ture and gen­der. The DSM-5 will also fea­ture greater atten­tion to cul­tural fac­tors that may affect diag­no­sis. In addi­tion to tools for cul­tural assess­ment, a new sec­tion will describe com­mon cul­tural syn­dromes, how they are expressed and pos­si­ble causes. The new infor­ma­tion will not only encour­age clin­i­cians to take into account such indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences, but will help stan­dard­ize such infor­ma­tion across clin­i­cians, says Hopwood.
  • A new sec­tion on areas that need fur­ther research. The DSM-5 will include three sec­tions: an intro­duc­tion with instruc­tions on using the man­ual, a sec­tion with diag­noses and diag­nos­tic cri­te­ria and a new sec­tion with infor­ma­tion on con­di­tions that require addi­tional research before they can be incor­po­rated into the offi­cial diag­noses.
    A com­mit­ment to more fre­quent updat­ing. The switch to an Ara­bic numeral in the manual’s name is more than just a design change, says Hop­wood. “The idea is that there will be ver­sions 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3 and that these sorts of mini-editions can come along more fre­quently than they had in the past so that the man­ual can be more respon­sive to research as things unfold,” he says.
  • Inclu­sion of Inter­na­tional Clas­si­fi­ca­tion of Dis­eases (ICD) codes. The DSM-5 includes equiv­a­lent ICD-9-Clinical Mod­i­fi­ca­tion (CM) codes and equiv­a­lent ICD-10-CM codes. As of Oct. 1, 2014, the ICD-10-CM will become the offi­cial health clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the U.S. gov­ern­ment, says psy­chol­o­gist Geof­frey M. Reed, PhD, senior project offi­cer in the World Health Organization’s Depart­ment of Men­tal Health and Sub­stance Abuse. “That means ICD-10-CM codes will be required for all elec­tronic health care trans­ac­tions, such as billing and reim­burse­ment,” he says. And unlike the DSM-5, which costs $199, the ICD-10-CM is avail­able free at the National Cen­ter for Health Sta­tis­tics web­site, he adds.

For a com­plete list of the changes, the Amer­i­can Psy­chi­atric Asso­ci­a­tion has pro­duced a com­pre­hen­sive doc­u­ment avail­able here in PDF for­mat. Click for “Changes from the DSM-4 to DSM-5″.

————————————————————————————

How can we help?

About Home­wood

For more than 129 years, Home­wood has been a cor­ner­stone of Cana­dian addic­tion and men­tal health treat­ment. We save lives. We have helped thou­sands of Cana­di­ans for decades to cope with the dev­as­tat­ing effects of men­tal ill­ness and addic­tion. Founded in 1883, we are renowned for the qual­ity of our treat­ment, our med­ical integrity, and the breadth and depth of our inter­dis­ci­pli­nary team.

Home­wood is part of Schlegel Health Care, a family-owned health care orga­ni­za­tion based in Kitch­ener, Ontario, that incor­po­rates three other entities:

Home­wood Human Solu­tions (www.homewoodhumansolutions.com)

Home­wood Human Solu­tions™ offers a one-of-a-kind approach to the mar­ket: the high­est qual­ity of clin­i­cal sup­port and inter­ven­tion avail­able within the EFAP indus­try, and an unmatched con­tin­uum of ser­vices — span­ning health pro­mo­tion, men­tal health and addic­tions treat­ment, and prevention-focused work-life coun­selling services.

Home­wood Health Cen­tre (www.homewood.org)

Home­wood Health Cen­tre is Canada’s unsur­passed med­ical leader in addic­tion and men­tal health treat­ment, pro­vid­ing highly spe­cial­ized psy­chi­atric ser­vices to all Cana­di­ans. We are a 312-bed, Sched­ule 1 facil­ity under the Ontario Men­tal Health Act. We oper­ate nine pro­grams treat­ing a range of men­tal health and addic­tion issues.

Home­wood Health Cen­tre is located in Guelph, Ontario.

Home­wood Dis­abil­ity Treat­ment Pro­gram (www.homewood.org/disability-treatment-program)

Effec­tive dis­abil­ity man­age­ment for men­tal ill­ness must go beyond “man­ag­ing” dis­abil­ity to include both inpa­tient and out­pa­tient treat­ment. Treat­ment goals must incor­po­rate strate­gies for suc­cess­ful work rein­te­gra­tion to min­i­mize recur­rence and relapse.

The Home­wood Dis­abil­ity Treat­ment Pro­gram (HDTP) com­bines the ser­vices avail­able through the Home­wood Health Cen­tre – a nation­ally rec­og­nized men­tal health and addic­tion treat­ment cen­tre with the best national net­work of skilled men­tal health and addic­tion treat­ment pro­fes­sion­als through Home­wood Human Solu­tionsTM.

Schlegel Vil­lages (www.schlegelvillages.com)

Schlegel Vil­lages are designed, built and man­aged by the Schlegel fam­ily of Kitch­ener, Ontario. Our motto: “It Takes a Vil­lage to Care” lives on.

Cana­dian owned and oper­ated, our Vil­lages ben­e­fit from the Schlegel fam­ily hav­ing over 40 years of direct expe­ri­ence co-owning, man­ag­ing and oper­at­ing Long Term Care and Retire­ment Com­mu­ni­ties in Ontario. There are eleven Schlegel Vil­lages hous­ing approx­i­mately 2500 seniors. Each Vil­lage has a Long Term Care com­po­nent, with Full Ser­vice Retire­ment Liv­ing, Assisted Care, Mem­ory Care and Inde­pen­dent Liv­ing options being added in stages. The first Schlegel Vil­lage opened in 1998 in Guelph.

Have you vis­ited our Pin­ter­est site? We have many, many more info­graph­ics to peruse. Have a look here!

We’re on Google Plus!


Com­ments? Thoughts or resources to share?

.

NOTE: The con­tent and opin­ions offered in Healthy Work­places blog posts do not nec­es­sar­ily reflect the for­mal stance of Home­wood Human Solu­tions, unless oth­er­wise iden­ti­fied. We bring this infor­ma­tion for­ward in the inter­ests of openly shar­ing val­ued infor­ma­tion in this time of fast-growing online con­ver­sa­tions and knowledge.

 

 

What’s new with the DSM-5?

April 3, 2013 By

May 22 will be an event­ful day, hope­fully an aus­pi­cious one. After much debate among the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity, men­tal health and related health orga­ni­za­tions, and the gen­eral pub­lic, the next revi­sion of the Diag­nos­tic and Sta­tis­ti­cal Man­ual of Men­tal Dis­or­ders (DSM-5) is to be released.

James Scully, MD, med­ical direc­tor and CEO of the Amer­i­can Psy­chi­atric Asso­ci­a­tion remarks:

Our hope is that by more accu­rately defin­ing dis­or­ders, diag­no­sis and clin­i­cal care will be improved and new research will be facil­i­tated to improve our understanding.

While many of the changes are now well-known, and reported on in this blog in ear­lier posts, the Amer­i­can Psy­chi­atric Asso­ci­a­tion has kept some of its cards close to the chest, so to speak. Not all has been revealed. Here is a sum­mary of what we do know, col­lected from a recent Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion publication.

Devel­op­men­tal focus

Quite a change. The DSM-5 uses an age-based order­ing, based on the age at which a dis­or­der is most likely to be expressed. Begin­ning with neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal dis­or­ders that occur most often in child­hood (e.g. intel­lec­tual devel­op­ment dis­or­ders, autism, ADHD, learn­ing dis­or­ders, Tourette’s dis­or­der) and end­ing with dis­or­ders asso­ci­ated with old age (e.g. neu­rocog­ni­tive dis­or­ders such as dementia).

Diag­nos­tic criteria

Some of the diag­nos­tic cri­te­ria have changed. “Autism spec­trum dis­or­der” is a newly formed com­pos­ite of the ear­lier DSM dis­or­ders of autism, Asperger’s, child­hood dis­in­te­gra­tive dis­or­der and per­va­sive devel­op­men­tal dis­or­der. The “new” autism spec­trum dis­or­der is defined by symp­tom severity.

Another exam­ple, bipo­lar dis­or­ders now empha­size changes in activ­ity and energy as well as mood as a way of facil­i­tat­ing ear­lier detec­tion and increas­ing diag­nos­tic accuracy.

In terms of neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal dis­or­ders, there are tighter cri­te­ria for social communication/social inter­ac­tion deficits.

And neu­rocog­ni­tive dis­or­ders are dis­tin­guished by a require­ment of demon­stra­ble neural sub­strate abnor­mal­i­ties in addi­tion to cog­ni­tive symp­toms and deficits. The occur­rence of these dis­or­ders sub­se­quent to nor­mal brain devel­op­ment sets this clus­ter apart from neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal dis­or­ders, and the bio­log­i­cal under­pin­nings are bet­ter under­stood than for men­tal dis­or­ders in any other cluster.

Dimen­sional mea­sures
The DSM-5 wil incor­po­rate dimen­sional mea­sures of sever­ity for many dis­or­ders based on the real­iza­tion that the lines between many cat­e­gories of dis­or­ders blurs over the lifes­pan, and that symp­toms attrib­uted to a sin­gle dis­or­der may also appear in oth­ers, but with dif­fer­ent lev­els of sever­ity (e.g. the new autism spec­trum disorder).

This change is notable for its chal­lenge to the cat­e­gor­i­cal way many clin­i­cians con­cep­tu­al­ize and under­stand psychopathology–from think­ing in terms of what sets dis­or­ders apart, to think­ing about what they have in common.

Empha­sis on cul­ture and gender

The role of cul­ture and gen­der plays more promi­nence in DSM-5 clas­si­fi­ca­tion. The DSM-5 will include new tools for cul­tural assess­ment and a new sec­tion will describe com­mon cul­tural syndromes.

Ongo­ing developments

The DSM-5 will con­tain a new sec­tion on con­di­tions that require addi­tional research before they can be incor­po­rated into the offi­cial diag­noses, a com­mit­ment to more fre­quent updat­ing to be more respon­sive to newly unfold­ing research, and inclu­sion of the new ICD-10-CM codes (the offi­cial clas­si­fi­ca­tion update to be released Octo­ber 1, 2014).

For more infor­ma­tion visit the Amer­i­can Psy­chi­atric Association’s DSM-5 web­site www.psychiatry.org/dsm5.

————————————————————————————

How can we help?

About Home­wood

For more than 129 years, Home­wood has been a cor­ner­stone of Cana­dian addic­tion and men­tal health treat­ment. We save lives. We have helped thou­sands of Cana­di­ans for decades to cope with the dev­as­tat­ing effects of men­tal ill­ness and addic­tion. Founded in 1883, we are renowned for the qual­ity of our treat­ment, our med­ical integrity, and the breadth and depth of our inter­dis­ci­pli­nary team.

Home­wood is part of Schlegel Health Care, a family-owned health care orga­ni­za­tion based in Kitch­ener, Ontario, that incor­po­rates three other entities:

Home­wood Human Solu­tions (www.homewoodhumansolutions.com)

Home­wood Human Solu­tions™ offers a one-of-a-kind approach to the mar­ket: the high­est qual­ity of clin­i­cal sup­port and inter­ven­tion avail­able within the EFAP indus­try, and an unmatched con­tin­uum of ser­vices — span­ning health pro­mo­tion, men­tal health and addic­tions treat­ment, and prevention-focused work-life coun­selling services.

Home­wood Health Cen­tre (www.homewood.org)

Home­wood Health Cen­tre is Canada’s unsur­passed med­ical leader in addic­tion and men­tal health treat­ment, pro­vid­ing highly spe­cial­ized psy­chi­atric ser­vices to all Cana­di­ans. We are a 312-bed, Sched­ule 1 facil­ity under the Ontario Men­tal Health Act. We oper­ate nine pro­grams treat­ing a range of men­tal health and addic­tion issues.

Home­wood Health Cen­tre is located in Guelph, Ontario.

Home­wood Dis­abil­ity Treat­ment Pro­gram (www.homewood.org/disability-treatment-program)

Effec­tive dis­abil­ity man­age­ment for men­tal ill­ness must go beyond “man­ag­ing” dis­abil­ity to include both inpa­tient and out­pa­tient treat­ment. Treat­ment goals must incor­po­rate strate­gies for suc­cess­ful work rein­te­gra­tion to min­i­mize recur­rence and relapse.

The Home­wood Dis­abil­ity Treat­ment Pro­gram (HDTP) com­bines the ser­vices avail­able through the Home­wood Health Cen­tre – a nation­ally rec­og­nized men­tal health and addic­tion treat­ment cen­tre with the best national net­work of skilled men­tal health and addic­tion treat­ment pro­fes­sion­als through Home­wood Human Solu­tionsTM.

Schlegel Vil­lages (www.schlegelvillages.com)

Schlegel Vil­lages are designed, built and man­aged by the Schlegel fam­ily of Kitch­ener, Ontario. Our motto: “It Takes a Vil­lage to Care” lives on.

Cana­dian owned and oper­ated, our Vil­lages ben­e­fit from the Schlegel fam­ily hav­ing over 40 years of direct expe­ri­ence co-owning, man­ag­ing and oper­at­ing Long Term Care and Retire­ment Com­mu­ni­ties in Ontario. There are eleven Schlegel Vil­lages hous­ing approx­i­mately 2500 seniors. Each Vil­lage has a Long Term Care com­po­nent, with Full Ser­vice Retire­ment Liv­ing, Assisted Care, Mem­ory Care and Inde­pen­dent Liv­ing options being added in stages. The first Schlegel Vil­lage opened in 1998 in Guelph.

Have you vis­ited our Pin­ter­est site? We have many, many more info­graph­ics to peruse. Have a look here!

We’re on Google Plus!


Com­ments? Thoughts or resources to share?

.

NOTE: The con­tent and opin­ions offered in Healthy Work­places blog posts do not nec­es­sar­ily reflect the for­mal stance of Home­wood Human Solu­tions, unless oth­er­wise iden­ti­fied. We bring this infor­ma­tion for­ward in the inter­ests of openly shar­ing val­ued infor­ma­tion in this time of fast-growing online con­ver­sa­tions and knowledge.

 

APA Survey Finds US Employers Unresponsive to Employee Needs

March 5, 2013 By

A March 2013 report on a new sur­vey from the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Association’s Cen­ter for Orga­ni­za­tional Excel­lence (http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2013/03/employee-needs.aspx) has some find­ings that our blog read­ers may find rel­e­vant and infor­ma­tive for their work­place employee sup­port prac­tices. Notably, the following.

  1. Less than half of work­ing Amer­i­cans reported that they receive ade­quate mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion or non-monetary recognition.
  2. Only 43 per­cent said that recog­ni­tion is based on fair per­for­mance evaluations.
  3. Less than half said their employ­ers ‘hear’ them by seek­ing input, and only 37% of employ­ees said employ­ers take action on this feedback.
  4. Less than half of employ­ees sur­veyed said that there were resources to sup­port their men­tal health needs (and fewer still, 36%, said that there were resources to sup­port man­ag­ing stress).

Says Nor­man B. Ander­son, PhD, CEO of the APA:

This isn’t just an HR or man­age­ment issue. The well-being of an organization’s work­force is a strate­gic busi­ness imper­a­tive that is linked to its per­for­mance and success.

For women, the office is not “a level play­ing field”

The sur­vey fur­ther inves­ti­gated how female employ­ees per­ceived the work envi­ron­ment. Sum­ma­riz­ing the results:

  1. Forty-eight per­cent of women felt less val­ued than men.
  2. Fewer employed women than men reported that their employer pro­vides suf­fi­cient oppor­tu­ni­ties for inter­nal career advance­ment (35 % ver­sus 43%) or resources to help them man­age stress (34% ver­sus 38%).
  3. More women than men said they “typ­i­cally feel tense or stressed out at work” (37% ver­sus 33%).

Work-Life Fit?

In terms of work-life bal­ance, the sur­vey results revealed:

  1. Only 52% of work­ers believe employ­ers value work-life balance.
  2. Only 39% of work­ers reported that their employ­ers pro­vide options for flex­i­ble work.
  3. Sur­pris­ingly per­haps? Thirty-seven per­cent of women reported reg­u­larly using employee ben­e­fits designed to help them meet work-life demands (whereas almost half of male work­ers reported tak­ing advan­tage of these ben­e­fits); and just 38% of women said they reg­u­larly uti­lize work arrange­ments, com­pared to 42% of men.

Con­clud­ing the report, David W. Bal­lard, PsyD, MBA head of APA’s Cen­ter for Orga­ni­za­tional Excel­lence, comments:

When employ­ers acknowl­edge that employ­ees have respon­si­bil­i­ties and lives out­side of work, they can take steps to pro­mote a good work-life fit and help indi­vid­u­als bet­ter man­age these mul­ti­ple demands…Forward-thinking orga­ni­za­tions are reeval­u­at­ing work prac­tices, pro­vid­ing employ­ees with resources that sup­port well-being and per­for­mance and apply­ing new tech­nolo­gies that help shift work from some­where we go from 9-to-5 to some­thing we do that is mean­ing­ful and cre­ates value.

 
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How can we help?

About Home­wood

For more than 129 years, Home­wood has been a cor­ner­stone of Cana­dian addic­tion and men­tal health treat­ment. We save lives. We have helped thou­sands of Cana­di­ans for decades to cope with the dev­as­tat­ing effects of men­tal ill­ness and addic­tion. Founded in 1883, we are renowned for the qual­ity of our treat­ment, our med­ical integrity, and the breadth and depth of our inter­dis­ci­pli­nary team.

Home­wood is part of Schlegel Health Care, a family-owned health care orga­ni­za­tion based in Kitch­ener, Ontario, that incor­po­rates three other entities:

Home­wood Human Solu­tions (www.homewoodhumansolutions.com)

Home­wood Human Solu­tions™ offers a one-of-a-kind approach to the mar­ket: the high­est qual­ity of clin­i­cal sup­port and inter­ven­tion avail­able within the EFAP indus­try, and an unmatched con­tin­uum of ser­vices — span­ning health pro­mo­tion, men­tal health and addic­tions treat­ment, and prevention-focused work-life coun­selling services.

Home­wood Health Cen­tre (www.homewood.org)

Home­wood Health Cen­tre is Canada’s unsur­passed med­ical leader in addic­tion and men­tal health treat­ment, pro­vid­ing highly spe­cial­ized psy­chi­atric ser­vices to all Cana­di­ans. We are a 312-bed, Sched­ule 1 facil­ity under the Ontario Men­tal Health Act. We oper­ate nine pro­grams treat­ing a range of men­tal health and addic­tion issues.

Home­wood Health Cen­tre is located in Guelph, Ontario.

Home­wood Dis­abil­ity Treat­ment Pro­gram (www.homewood.org/disability-treatment-program)

Effec­tive dis­abil­ity man­age­ment for men­tal ill­ness must go beyond “man­ag­ing” dis­abil­ity to include both inpa­tient and out­pa­tient treat­ment. Treat­ment goals must incor­po­rate strate­gies for suc­cess­ful work rein­te­gra­tion to min­i­mize recur­rence and relapse.

The Home­wood Dis­abil­ity Treat­ment Pro­gram (HDTP) com­bines the ser­vices avail­able through the Home­wood Health Cen­tre – a nation­ally rec­og­nized men­tal health and addic­tion treat­ment cen­tre with the best national net­work of skilled men­tal health and addic­tion treat­ment pro­fes­sion­als through Home­wood Human Solu­tionsTM.

Schlegel Vil­lages (www.schlegelvillages.com)

Schlegel Vil­lages are designed, built and man­aged by the Schlegel fam­ily of Kitch­ener, Ontario. Our motto: “It Takes a Vil­lage to Care” lives on.

Cana­dian owned and oper­ated, our Vil­lages ben­e­fit from the Schlegel fam­ily hav­ing over 40 years of direct expe­ri­ence co-owning, man­ag­ing and oper­at­ing Long Term Care and Retire­ment Com­mu­ni­ties in Ontario. There are eleven Schlegel Vil­lages hous­ing approx­i­mately 2500 seniors. Each Vil­lage has a Long Term Care com­po­nent, with Full Ser­vice Retire­ment Liv­ing, Assisted Care, Mem­ory Care and Inde­pen­dent Liv­ing options being added in stages. The first Schlegel Vil­lage opened in 1998 in Guelph.

Com­ments? Thoughts or resources to share?

.

NOTE: The con­tent and opin­ions offered in Healthy Work­places blog posts do not nec­es­sar­ily reflect the for­mal stance of Home­wood Human Solu­tions, unless oth­er­wise iden­ti­fied. We bring this infor­ma­tion for­ward in the inter­ests of openly shar­ing val­ued infor­ma­tion in this time of fast-growing online con­ver­sa­tions and knowledge.

 

CAMH releases latest report: 2011 Addictions and Mental Health Indicators (Ontario)

December 8, 2012 By

Last week, researchers at the Cen­tre for Addic­tion and Men­tal Health released the 2011 CAMH Mon­i­tor (Cen­tre for Addic­tion and Men­tal Health) sur­vey of sub­stance use trends for Ontario adults.

The CAMH Mon­i­tor is the longest ongo­ing addic­tion and men­tal health sur­vey of adults in Canada. The sur­vey of 3000 adults show­cases epi­demi­o­log­i­cal trends in alco­hol, tobacco, other drug use and men­tal health among adult Ontar­i­ans aged 18 years and older.

From its most recent sur­vey, CAMH Mon­i­tor find­ings show some areas of improve­ment. In par­tic­u­lar, while 15% of Ontario still iden­tify as smok­ers, the report high­lights that smok­ing rates have been declin­ing steadily for years in Ontario.

This year’s report, which is avail­able online (see below) names sev­eral key areas requir­ing con­tin­ued pub­lic health atten­tion. Below are some highlights.

Sub­stance Use and Related Factors

Gen­der. Asso­ci­ated with 13 sub­stance use mea­sures. Men dis­played higher preva­lence than women on all sub­stance use mea­sures where dif­fer­ences were observed.

Age of respon­dent was dis­cernibly asso­ci­ated with 15 sub­stance use mea­sures. In most cases, use declined with age or was high­est among 18 to 29 year olds. One excep­tion was daily drink­ing, which increased with age.

Mar­i­tal sta­tus was dis­cernibly asso­ci­ated with 7 sub­stance use mea­sures. In all cases, use was higher among never mar­ried or pre­vi­ously mar­ried respondents.

Edu­ca­tion level was dis­cernibly asso­ci­ated with 5 indi­ca­tors. The most com­mon pat­tern noted was that sub­stance use declined with increas­ing education.

There was no dom­i­nant pat­tern in regional dif­fer­ences. Sta­tis­ti­cally dis­cernible dif­fer­ences in pub­lic health region were evi­dent with only one indi­ca­tor: drink­ing haz­ardously or harm­fully was above the provin­cial esti­mate in South West region.

Income was dis­cernibly asso­ci­ated with 8 indi­ca­tors. In most cases, sub­stance use tended to increase with income or was high­est among those with higher incomes. One excep­tion was life­time cocaine use, which declined with income.

Men­tal Health Sta­tus and Related Factors

Provin­cially, one in seven (14.7%) adults reported symp­toms indica­tive of ele­vated psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tress in 2011.

Ele­vated dis­tress was high­est among those aged 18 to 29 and low­est among those aged 65 years and older.

When adjust­ing for other fac­tors, pre­vi­ously mar­ried respon­dents were the most likely to report ele­vated dis­tress in the past few weeks.

Poor Men­tal Health

Over­all, an esti­mated 6.0% of Ontario adults rated their men­tal health as poor (defined as the per­cent­age report­ing “fair” or “poor” men­tal health in gen­eral) in 2011. Mar­i­tal sta­tus and edu­ca­tion were dis­cernibly related to self-reported poor men­tal health.

Fre­quent Men­tal Dis­tress Days

About 7.1% of Ontario adults reported fre­quent men­tal dis­tress days dur­ing the past 30 days (defined as the per­cent­age report­ing 14 or more men­tally unhealthy days). Pub­lic health region, mar­i­tal sta­tus and edu­ca­tion were dis­cernibly related to report­ing fre­quent men­tal dis­tress days, after adjust­ing for other demo­graphic characteristics.

Antianx­i­ety med­ica­tion (anxiolytics)

An esti­mated 7.1% of adults reported using a pre­scribed med­ica­tion for anx­i­ety in 2011. Age, mar­i­tal sta­tus, edu­ca­tion and income were dis­cernibly related to past year use of antianx­i­ety medication.

Anti­de­pres­sants

An esti­mated 7.1% of Ontario adults reported using a pre­scribed med­ica­tion for depres­sion – anti­de­pres­sants – dur­ing the 12 months before the sur­vey. Use of anti­de­pres­sants was dis­cernibly related to gen­der, age, mar­i­tal sta­tus, edu­ca­tion and region.

Trends

Past year alco­hol use increased dis­cernibly between 2010 and 2011, from 78.0% to 81.2%. There were also three sub­group increases dur­ing this period: among women, from 74.6% to 78.9%, among res­i­dents of the Cen­tral West, from 76.0% to 83.4%, and among mar­ried respon­dents, from 78.6% to 81.8%.

Source: Down­load the report from the CAMH web­site: http://www.camh.ca/en/research/news_and_publications/Pages/camh_monitor.aspx

About the 2011 CAMH Mon­i­tor eReport

The Cen­tre for Addic­tion and Men­tal Health’s CAMH Mon­i­tor is the longest ongo­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive sur­vey of adult sub­stance use in Canada. The study, which now spans 35 years, is based on 26 ran­dom sur­veys con­ducted between 1977 and 2011. The 2011 cycle of the CAMH Mon­i­tor is based on tele­phone inter­views with 3,039 adults aged 18 and older across Ontario (response rate — 51% of eli­gi­ble respon­dents). This report presents the 2011 esti­mates of sub­stance use and related harms, as well as men­tal health indi­ca­tors among Ontario adults. It also describes changes in sub­stance use and related harms since 1977.

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NOTE: The con­tent and opin­ions offered in Healthy Work­places blog posts do not nec­es­sar­ily reflect the for­mal stance of Home­wood Human Solu­tions, unless oth­er­wise iden­ti­fied. We bring this infor­ma­tion for­ward in the inter­ests of openly shar­ing val­ued infor­ma­tion in this time of fast-growing online con­ver­sa­tions and knowledge.

Mounting disagreement with proposed changes to DSM-5

December 4, 2012 By

Fol­low­ing this weekend’s deci­sion by the Amer­i­can Psy­chi­atric Asso­ci­a­tion (APA) Board of Trustees to approve the final diag­nos­tic cri­te­ria for the upcom­ing fifth edi­tion of the Diag­nos­tic and Sta­tis­ti­cal Man­ual of Men­tal Dis­or­ders (DSM-5), experts in dis­agree­ment with the changes are begin­ning to weigh in.

One of the most vocal crit­ics, Allen Frances, MD, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus from the Depart­ment of Psy­chi­a­try at Duke Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine and chair of the DSM-IV Task Force, comments:

“DSM-5 opens up the pos­si­bil­ity that mil­lions and mil­lions of peo­ple cur­rently con­sid­ered nor­mal will be diag­nosed as hav­ing a men­tal dis­or­der and will receive med­ica­tion and stigma that they don’t need,…this is the sad­dest moment in my 45-year career of study­ing, prac­tic­ing, and teach­ing psy­chi­a­try. [The] approval makes it likely that DSM-5 will start a…dozen or more new fads which will be detri­men­tal to the mis­di­ag­nosed indi­vid­u­als and costly to our society.”

He writes on his blog: “My best advice to clin­i­cians, to the press, and to the gen­eral pub­lic — be skep­ti­cal and don’t fol­low DSM-5 blindly down a road likely to lead to mas­sive over-diagnosis and harm­ful over-medication.”

Dr. Frances advised that clin­i­cians ignore 10 diag­nos­tic revi­sions “that make no sense.” These include:

  • the inclu­sion of dis­rup­tive mood dysregulation;
  • tak­ing out the bereave­ment exclusion;
  • cre­at­ing “a slip­pery slope” by intro­duc­ing the con­cept of behav­ioral addictions;
  • intro­duc­ing adult atten­tion deficit dis­or­der, which could lead to the mis­use of stimulants;
  • obscur­ing “the already fuzzy bound­ary” between gen­er­al­ized anx­i­ety dis­or­der and wor­ries from every­day living.

Adds Brent Dean Rob­bins, PhD, direc­tor of the psy­chol­ogy pro­gram at Point Park Uni­ver­sity in Pitts­burgh, Pennsylvania”

“…We are very con­cerned that the field tri­als exposed extremely poor reli­a­bil­ity for most of the major diag­nos­tic cat­e­gories. As a result, we believe strongly that the DSM-5 will not pro­vide clin­i­cians with the con­fi­dence that they are using a sci­en­tif­i­cally reli­able and valid tool to assess the men­tal health of patients.”

He also noted con­cerns over the inclu­sion of dis­rup­tive mood dys­reg­u­la­tion dis­or­der, which may “lead to a pathol­o­giz­ing of nor­mal chil­dren,” and the removal of the bereave­ment exclu­sion, which he says will blend together nor­mal grief and clin­i­cal depression.

“The line between these 2 states of mind have been com­pletely blurred by the DSM-5. As a result, in our opin­ion, the DSM-5 Task Force has demon­strated abject fail­ure to rec­og­nize the dif­fer­ence between nor­ma­tive human experiences…and abnor­mal­ity. This fail­ure under­mines the valid­ity of the entire DSM-5 project.”

Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion cre­ates an “open letter”

Last year, divi­sions of the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion cre­ated an “open let­ter” address­ing seri­ous reser­va­tions about the DSM-5. It gar­nered more than 14,000 sig­na­tures from men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als, soci­eties, and stu­dents. The doc­u­ment ques­tions the new manual’s “low­er­ing of diag­nos­tic thresh­olds for mul­ti­ple dis­or­der cat­e­gories, about the intro­duc­tion of dis­or­ders that may lead to inap­pro­pri­ate med­ical treat­ment of vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions, and about spe­cific pro­pos­als that appear to lack empir­i­cal grounding.”

The Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Association’s Divi­sion 32 (the Soci­ety for Human­is­tic Psy­chol­ogy) spon­sored the peti­tion in alliance with divi­sions 27 and 49 (the Soci­ety for Com­mu­nity Research and Action: Divi­sion of Com­mu­nity Psy­chol­ogy and the Soci­ety for Group Psy­chol­ogy and Psy­chother­apy, respectively).

The organization’s Divi­sion 32 (Soci­ety for Human­is­tic Psy­chol­ogy) was a key spon­sor of the peti­tion. The president-elect of this divi­sion told Med­scape Med­ical News that the newly approved cri­te­ria are a seri­ous disappointment.

Sarah R. Kamens, a doc­toral can­di­date in clin­i­cal psy­chol­ogy at Ford­ham Uni­ver­sity in New York City, and stu­dent rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Association’s Divi­sion 32, said that some of the responses from the DSM-5 task force have not ade­quately dealt with issues brought up dur­ing the pub­lic feed­back sessions.

Dr. Elkins said that over­med­ica­tion of vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions remains one of their biggest con­cerns with the upcom­ing manual:

“We don’t believe the DSM-5 com­mit­tee inten­tion­ally wants to hurt chil­dren or the elderly. In fact, I think their ratio­nale and their efforts are com­ing from very good inten­tions. But we just dis­agree with them in terms of what the unin­tended con­se­quences will be.”

Real-World Impli­ca­tions

Dr. Frances said that, con­trary to accu­sa­tions that have been brought up through­out the DSM-5 approval process, he does not believe that the task force had any sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial conflicts.

“Indeed, they have made some very bad deci­sions, but they did so with pure hearts and not because they wanted to help the drug com­pa­nies. Theirs is an intel­lec­tual, not finan­cial, con­flict of inter­est,” he wrote on his blog.

“Only one third of peo­ple with severe depres­sion see a men­tal health clin­i­cian in the pre­vi­ous year. And there have been sub­stan­tial cut­backs to treat peo­ple with severe psy­chi­atric ill­ness,” he reported.

“So as a coun­try, we are devot­ing fewer and fewer resources to those peo­ple who are most clearly diagnosed.”

He added that the DSM-5 Task Force is com­posed of experts who worry most about the missed patient and not about the mis­la­beled one.

“There is a tremen­dous mis­al­lo­ca­tion of resources. And this will make it worse. I think the DSM-5 peo­ple were well mean­ing. They just don’t see the impli­ca­tions of these sug­ges­tions once applied in the larger world.”

Like us on facebook.com/homewoodhumansolutions

Fol­low @HomewoodHS on Twitter

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Watch us on our Home­woodHS YouTube channel

NOTE: The con­tent and opin­ions offered in Healthy Work­places blog posts do not nec­es­sar­ily reflect the for­mal stance of Home­wood Human Solu­tions, unless oth­er­wise iden­ti­fied. We bring this infor­ma­tion for­ward in the inter­ests of openly shar­ing val­ued infor­ma­tion in this time of fast-growing online con­ver­sa­tions and knowledge.

Are we all that anxious? More problems with the DSM

July 17, 2012 By

The debate about pro­posed changes for the DSM-5 con­tin­ues to boil.

Con­tin­u­ing the debate we’ve reported on in pre­vi­ous posts on this blog (Debat­ing the DSM-5 and DSM-5: Cause for seri­ous con­cern?), Sharon Bagely’s recent arti­cle “In the age of anx­i­ety, are we all men­tally ill?” presents three argu­ments. Quot­ing from the article:

The crit­i­cism rests on three argu­ments. First, the DSM fails to rec­og­nize that anx­i­ety is nor­mal and even ben­e­fi­cial in many sit­u­a­tions, so it con­flates a prop­erly func­tion­ing brain sys­tem with a pathol­ogy. Sec­ond, the DSM’s descrip­tion of anx­i­ety is more about enforc­ing social norms than medicine.

Finally, they say, anx­i­ety is adap­tive. Its brain cir­cuitry was honed by evo­lu­tion for a pur­pose. Only when that mech­a­nism mis­fires should a per­son be diag­nosed as men­tally ill.

“No human emo­tion is more basic than anx­i­ety,” said soci­ol­o­gist Allan Hor­witz of Rut­gers Uni­ver­sity. “Many forms of it sim­ply should not be cat­e­go­rized as dis­or­ders, because they’re the result of the way peo­ple evolved thou­sands of years ago, rather than some­thing going wrong.”

Coun­ter­ing these argu­ments, Dr. Car­olyn Robi­nowitz, a past pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Psy­chi­atric Asso­ca­tion who is in pri­vate prac­tice in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., com­ments “Peo­ple who crit­i­cize that are show­ing their bias…When we get bet­ter at diag­nos­ing hyper­ten­sion, we don’t say that’s terrible.”

No doubt this debate will con­tinue and hope­fully a bal­ance of evi­dence, best prac­tices, and clin­i­cal judge­ment will pre­vail over spe­cial inter­est group, polit­i­cal, social pol­icy, and/or com­mer­cial interests.

In the mean­time, we’ll do our best to stay calm.
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Tools for Making the Business Case for Investments in Workplace Health and Wellness

June 18, 2012 By

Health and well­ness pro­grams are almost a given in most orga­ni­za­tions, but, accord­ing to The Con­fer­ence Board of Canada, Cana­dian employ­ers are in an incip­i­ent stage of actu­ally mea­sur­ing the return on invest­ment (ROI) that these pro­gram generate.

In a break­through approach, the Con­fer­ence Board of Canada has pub­lished a report that pro­vides orga­ni­za­tions of all sizes, in an objec­tive and non-partisan way, with advice, tools, and an eval­u­a­tion frame­work on how to mea­sure the health and well­ness pro­grams return on invest­ment (ROI).

It is known that invest­ments in health and well­ness pro­grams can lead to higher pro­duc­tiv­ity, moti­vated employ­ees, a thriv­ing orga­ni­za­tional cul­ture, as well as reduce ben­e­fit costs, absen­teeism and pre­sen­teeism.  By uti­liz­ing a reli­able ROI cal­cu­la­tor, orga­ni­za­tions can bet­ter tar­get their invest­ments to the health con­di­tions most preva­lent in their work­force and to areas where their employ­ees are more sus­cep­ti­ble to change. In addi­tion, hav­ing a snap­shot of pro­gram out­comes, employ­ers can bet­ter allo­cate funds and deter­mine which health and well­ness com­po­nents are crit­i­cal for the suc­cess of their program.

Home­wood Human Solu­tions is one of the spon­sors of this report which is avail­able through The Con­fer­ence Board’s web site.

The French ver­sion of the report will be avail­able by August.

For more infor­ma­tion about the report and how to obtain a copy, click here.

 

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New study to provide hard data on healthy workplace ROI

June 12, 2012 By

Hap­pen­ing now! The Sun Life Finan­cial Well­ness Insti­tute and the Richard Ivey School of Busi­ness, have part­nered to exam­ine the extent to which exist­ing empir­i­cal research sug­gests a strong busi­ness case for Cana­dian work­place well­ness pro­gram, and the expected costs, and indi­vid­ual and orga­ni­za­tional out­comes, of evidence-based HealthyRE­TURNS well­ness programs.

Dr. Michael Rouse, health sec­tor direc­tor with the Ivey School, calls human cap­i­tal “the most impor­tant resource” avail­able to employ­ers, and offered the fol­low­ing overview of the research:

Employ­ers under­stand the link between pro­duc­tiv­ity, engage­ment and healthy work­ers, Rouse stated. How­ever, their focus is on man­ag­ing grow­ing health-care costs. For that rea­son, the Canada-wide study aims to pro­vide evi­dence of the return on invest­ment from sup­port­ing healthy work­places. Here are more high­lights of the research:

  • It will be mod­elled from Sun Life Financial’s Healthy Returns Pro­gram, mea­sur­ing the impact on employee health, pro­duc­tiv­ity and two-year health-care costs.
  • The dif­fi­culty that exists in assess­ing return on invest­ment is not due to lack of research, as much research has been done.
  • What has caused dif­fi­culty is that most Cana­dian reports and stud­ies have been viewed as flawed, so they are hard to apply in a wide setting.
  • Even in the United States, where most of the stud­ies have taken place, few are judged to have the required data and rigour to cement a busi­ness case:
  • Accord­ing to one report that looked at more than 100 work­place health stud­ies, fewer than 10% met rig­or­ous standards
  • The remain­ing stud­ies con­cluded that sup­port­ing employee health can result in aver­age annual sav­ings of nearly $400 per employee, at a cost of just over $150 per employee
  • The return on invest­ment found in those stud­ies resulted in a return on invest­ment of more than three dol­lars for each dol­lar spent
  • Sim­i­larly, Cana­dian research by the Ivey School looked at more than 500 stud­ies and found only four that met rig­or­ous stan­dards.
    Of those four, pro­grams that sup­ported employee health reduced absen­teeism by an aver­age of 1.5 days, com­pared to an aver­age of five to 11 days per year in Canada.

Quot­ing Sun Life Financial:

Although stud­ies have been con­ducted in other coun­tries and on spe­cific aspects of pro­duc­tiv­ity, this research will pro­vide much needed quan­tifi­able evi­dence on the impact and ben­e­fits of work­place well­ness pro­grams on the long-term health and well-being of Canadians.

For more infor­ma­tion, or to see if your orga­ni­za­tion is eli­gi­ble to par­tic­i­pate click here for a descrip­tive PDF.

Pre­lim­i­nary find­ing are expected later this year, with ongo­ing research through 2012.  A full report is planned for 2013. Stay tuned, we will be fol­low­ing the progress!

About the Sun Life Well­ness Institute

The Sun Life Well­ness Insti­tute is posi­tioned to col­lab­o­rate with aca­d­e­mic, pub­lic, pri­vate and well­ness com­mu­ni­ties to pro­mote research and knowl­edge shar­ing. The Insti­tute is an ini­tia­tive of Sun Life Financial.

About Richard Ivey School of Business

The Richard Ivey School of Busi­ness is home to the Ivey Cen­tre for Health Inno­va­tion and Lead­er­ship. One of the Centre’s key man­dates is to address health care’s “inno­va­tion adop­tion deficit” and the per­sis­tent lack of highly-trained and skilled lead­ers and change-agents able to com­mer­cial­ize inno­va­tion or effec­tively imple­ment new sys­tems and man­age­ment processes in both the pri­vate sec­tor and in our pub­licly funded health care institutions.

 

 

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