Healthy Skepticism Library item: 432
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
Marre K.
PhRMA, Chamber team up to reduce worker depression
The Hill 2004 Jun 8
Full text:
The leading drug-industry trade group and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are working together in an effort to demonstrate the cost of depression in the workplace and to show employers that treating affected workers would improve the bottom line.
The Chamber, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and the American Psychiatric Association (APA) yesterday jointly introduced a ³depression calculator² that shows employers that there will be a net gain if they help depressed employees get treatment.
Estimates put the cost of untreated depression at close to $80 billion
annually.
Richard Smith, PhRMA¹s senior vice president for policy, research and strategic planning, said at the calculator¹s unveiling that depression ³affects almost every business in the country.²
PhRMA is sponsoring the Internet-based tool, and Smith acknowledged that revenue for the pharmaceutical industry would increase if depression were treated more often.
But he argued that an improvement in businesses¹ bottom line and the added happiness in families affected by depression would more than offset the cost to companies for treatment.
The calculator allows employers to enter information about their businesses, such as size, geographic location and the age and sex of their workers ‹ all of which affect the prevalence of depression.
Based on peer-reviewed literature and using ³conservative estimates,² the calculator then computes how much untreated depression, both in terms of absenteeism and low productivity, costs the businesses annually and over a longer period of time. In addition, the tool calculates how much the business would save if employees were treated.
For example, an 8,000-employee healthcare facility could expect to have more than 450 employees affected by untreated depression, resulting in annual costs of at least $2.7 million. Treating those employees could result in net savings of at least $400,000.
But one of the creators of the calculator, Jim Hendrix, vice president of research for the HSM Group, a healthcare research firm, pointed out that the smaller a company is, the less reliable the depression calculator becomes.
PhRMA President and CEO Alan Holmer said, ³Employers and employees both come out ahead when employees with depression receive the right medical treatment, with both counseling and medicines.²
The sponsors of the initiative say depressed employees are affected 30 to 50 workdays a year.
³Depression is a real medical illness ‹ not just a Œbad day¹ or a character weakness,² said Stephen Heidel, who represented the APA at yesterday¹s event. He added that depression is ³among the most treatable² of mental illnesses and that almost everybody responds in some way to treatment.
Kate Sullivan Hare, the Chamber¹s executive director of healthcare policy, said that although the group is sometimes at odds with the APA on other mental-health issues, it is pleased to endorse the calculator.
The Chamber is an opponent to mental-health-parity legislation that has broad support in Congress but has not been passed this congressional session.
A Democratic aide said: ³If the Chamber of Commerce is truly concerned about the millions of people in this country suffering from mental illness, and they certainly should be, they should consider reversing their opposition to the Wellstone Mental Health Equitable Treatment Act and join the more than 360 organizations actively supporting that legislation.² The aide added that this would be ³the single best way to assist depressed individuals in this country in getting the treatment they need to get better.²
Sullivan Hare added that employers do not often get a bottom-line return regarding employee benefits but that treating depression is an exception.
Sean Sullivan, president and CEO of the Institute of Health and Productivity Management, said at the event that the costs of depression are ³huge² but would increase as estimates of the illness¹s impact on productivity become more accurate.
