Bosses who choose to invest in mental health insurance for their employees will benefit from increased productivity, that’s the message from medical experts and health insurance executives alike.
Professionals Arabian Business spoke with stated that mental health is inextricable from physical health and that employers would see a greater return on investment from offering better provision.
“If we take any of the mental disorders there are clear links between them and non-psychiatric symptoms, or purely physical symptoms,” Dr. Joseph El Khoury, chief of psychiatry and behavioural health at American Hospital Dubai, told Arabian Business.
Physical symptoms that can manifest from mental disorders can include headaches, backaches, irritable bowel syndrome, migraines, exhaustion, fatigue or fibromyalgia.
“All these conditions that actually make employers lose sick days are better handled when we go to the root cause. That might be depression, anxiety, burnout – or it could be something unrelated to work. It could be something in the person’s genetic make-up like ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder],” he said.
Beyond sick days, addressing health issues at the core reduces presenteeism – or when individuals are physically present but not able to work, resulting in a financial loss for companies. Further, the pandemic has changed what people look for in employers, and providing greater mental health care can help with employee retention.
More than 90 percent of individuals in the region report being stressed, according to insurance company Cigna, compared to a global average of 85 percent.
Khoury said he has seen patients leave a higher-paying job for a company where mental health insurance is provided or an environment that is supportive physically and mentally.
The Covid-19 pandemic has shifted the public’s attitude towards health insurance, with 72 percent of UAE respondents to insurance company’s Aetna survey saying that healthcare is more important to them now than ever.
“Employers should look at insurance from a holistic and talent retention perspective,” Dr. Charu Thadani, head of medical, Europe and MEA at Aetna International, said.
Companies have responded, with Bayzat, an HR software provider, finding that 67 percent of UAE companies have increased the amount they spend on insurance in the last 12 months.
“There’s a recognition that if we can help people get better from a mental health perspective, we’ll get better from a physical health perspective,” Jerome Droesch, the CEO of Cigna in the Middle East and North Africa, told Arabian Business.
Even with additional spending on mental health identified by Bayzat, research shows that employee standards are still not being met, or that workers know how to access care or feel comfortable doing so.
One-in-three in the UAE say they have a lack of support and access to mental health care, Cigna found.
“A lot of high-level executives and creatives – a lot of these people are neurodiverse and they come with issues they have to deal with,” Khoury said. “Anxiety and depression don’t make you any less able to perform if the right conditions are met and treatment is made available,” Khoury said.
ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and dyslexia are some of the conditions that classify as neurodiverse, all of which correlate with higher rates of depression and anxiety. ASD individuals are around four times more likely to experience depression. One-third of adults with ADHD will have a depressive episode, and one in eight have general anxiety, according to the American National Institutes of Health.
“People aren’t asking to be treated differently. They’re just saying ‘I need to be treated fairly in the workplace because of this particular handicap or condition’,” Khoury said.
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