Study finds depression treatment aids productivity in the workplace

Employers who screen and guide depressed workers through treatment options reap an average of three extra weeks of productivity from each of those employees per year, according to the first national study designed to measure whether such interventions pay off for businesses.

The study, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, involved 604 workers identified through voluntary surveys as having significant depression.

The workers came from 16 large companies from diverse industries.

Half of the subjects were randomly assigned to case managers who oversaw their treatments — and sometimes delivered psychotherapy — over the phone. The rest were told that their responses indicated possible depression but were not offered additional support.

Researchers concluded that proactive depression care delivers a "return on investment" because employees who received telephone outreach quit or missed work less frequently and performed better when they did show up.

The study, however, did not attempt to calculate the exact return. Researchers did not tally, for instance, how much co-workers pick up the slack for absent employees or whether telephone outreach in low-wage, high-turnover jobs would be worth the extra expense.

But the large trial showed that structured telephone support not only lessens depression symptoms but improves productivity as well, said Dr. Philip Wang, director of the Services and Intervention Research Division of the National Institute of Mental Health in Rockville, Md.

"Employers should change their view that providing an enhanced depression-care benefit is just a cost," said Wang, the study's chief author. "The better view is to see depression care as an investment opportunity."

Dr. Gregory Simon, a senior investigator at the Group Health Center for Health Studies in Seattle, said many employers are oblivious to the hidden cost of depression.

"People who are depressed miss a lot of work. But they don't call in and say, 'I'm depressed,' " said Simon, one of the study's co-authors.

Depression is a common disorder, striking about 7 percent of American adults, or more than 13 million people, each year. Yet the majority of depression sufferers go untreated or receive therapies that fall short of recommended guidelines.

Perhaps notably for employers, workers in the study who were assigned to telephone case managers did not use significantly more overall health care, including antidepressants and doctor visits.

Rather, the workers seemed to derive much of the benefit from the regular contact with care managers, all of whom were licensed mental-health clinicians employed by United Behavioral Health, a large behavioral health plan.

All the workers in the study were evaluated at six months and at 12 months by interviewers who did not know whether they belong to the intervention or control group.

Employees receiving support worked an average of two more hours each week. They also were more likely to remain employed after a year; more than 92 percent stayed with their employers or found other jobs, compared with 88 percent in the control group.

In about a third of the intervention cases, care managers conducted psychotherapy over the phone because the workers were reluctant to seek treatment elsewhere.

The cost of such telephone program ranges from $100 to $400 per year per worker, depending on the intensity, according to the authors.

But researchers estimate that the savings from decreased absenteeism alone would be worth several times that amount.

Kyung Song: 206-464-2423 or ksong@seattletimes.com