University Mental Health: EAPs and Wellness for Employee Well-being

This report delves into the significance of mental health in the workplace, emphasizing the crucial roles of Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) and wellness programs. It highlights how these interventions address stress, anxiety, and various emotional and psychosocial issues faced by employees. The report underscores the importance of EAPs in providing confidential counseling, assessment, and follow-up services, thereby enhancing employee efficiency and preventing workplace disruptions. Additionally, it explores the benefits of wellness programs, such as smoking cessation, physical fitness, yoga, and massage therapy, in promoting both mental and physical well-being. The report concludes that both EAPs and wellness programs are essential for fostering a healthy and supportive work environment, reducing stress, and enhancing employee motivation and overall well-being. The report uses information from published sources to back up its findings.

RUNNING HEAD: MENTAL HEALTH
MENTAL HEALTH
Name of Student
Name of University
Author note

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It is very important that in an organizational framework where many employees
works at an individual and at an team level – that the work processes, the employees at
executive, manger, supervisor levels and the operational factors work very inherently and
coherently, in order to deliver a meaningful productivity at the end of each day. But in a
modern age, the competition is fierce and the work targets that are to be achieved by each
employee at any designated is rising and this in addition to the workplace politics and
disruptions, leads to stress, anxiety mediated mental health issues amongst the employees
working in the organization.
The Employee Assistance Programs which is otherwise known as EAPs are a very
important set of mental health improvement interventions that is both pertinent and useful at a
corporate or organizational level (Sonnenstuhl & Trice, 2018). The Employee Assistance
Programs provide a set of short duration counselling, take assessment of the employees and
keeps it confidential, deliver the follow up services as well (Hsu, Wang & Lan, 2019). On the
overall, the services provided by Employee Assistance Programs not only addresses stress
and anxiety but also addresses the emotional problems, grief issues, psychosocial issues of
alcohol and other drug addictions, family issues and identity issues (Masi, Jacobson Frey &
Sharar, 2016). They counsellors working in the framework of Employee Assistance Programs
provide remedies to the employees who have a hard time understanding and relating to the
actual organizational needs and aid them to increase their efficiency in a very mentally safe
way and overcome their challenges. Other than the management of these organizational
challenges with development of mental illness, the Employee Assistance Programs forms an
integral part of the organizational strategy and staff development programs so as to prevent
the development of various complex psychosocial situations of workplace violence,
workplace disruption, attrition, workplace trauma and severe mental health deterioration
consequences. Chiefly, it also addresses problems such as harassment, relationship issues,

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legal and financial issues plus the geriatric care, child care and parenting related issues of the
employees.
The Wellness programs are also very critical to management and prevention of mental
health disorders and dysfunctions in the employees who work persistently for the betterment
of the company goals and project success. The wellness programs are recreative, healing and
motivating in nature and in the organization framework – they are targeted to improve the
mental health and physical health of the employees, holistically. Wellness programs such as
smoking cessation programs aid and encourage the employees to address their smoking
addictions, the physical fitness programs in office gyms and fitness centers promote not only
physical health but a sense of mental well-being plus sleep as well (Passey et al., 2018).
Similarly, yoga and meditation programs promote mental healing and reduces stress, anxiety
to development of focus and harmony in life and work. Other than these major ones, the
Wellness programs in the organization also include paramedic services such as massage
therapy and other form mental and physical relaxation therapies that help the psychological
well-being of the employees by improving their feelings of release, freedom and esteem plus
self-image.
So it can be concluded saying that both Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) and
Wellness programs promote mental healing, reduces and eliminates stress and anxiety,
enhances motivation in the employees.

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References
Hsu, Y. C., Wang, C. W., & Lan, J. B. (2019). Evaluating the performance of employee
assistance programs (EAP): a checklist developed from a large sample of public
agencies. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 1-21.
Masi, D. A., Jacobson Frey, J., & Sharar, D. A. (2016). The History of Employee Assistance
Programs: A 50 Year Perspective (US and Canada)-8.
Passey, D. G., Brown, M. C., Hammerback, K., Harris, J. R., & Hannon, P. A. (2018).
Managers’ support for employee wellness programs: An integrative review. American
Journal of Health Promotion, 32(8), 1789-1799.
Sonnenstuhl, W. J., & Trice, H. M. (2018). Strategies for employee assistance programs: The
crucial balance (No. 30). Cornell University Press.