When I hear in the national news that some employee turned violent in a horrible and tragic incident and shot coworkers, I can't help but wonder if--as the bullets flew--there wasn't in that employee's hip pocket or purse, a health insurance card and a barely visible, small type, "1-800 EAP" number printed on the back of it; a practically invisible, poorly promoted telephone helpline.
Is this sort of cost containment to prevent access to behavioral health benefits really worth it to companies? I think if they knew the real story, and had a different impresssion what risks they really face with a "DEAP" "diminished EAP", they would think twice about it.
A CT-EAP (core technology EAP) can reach out so much more, do more, and be more than what some of these benefits entities have sold or given away to America's employers. Where's the education to change all of this?
If we research the tragedies seen in the news via the Internet, would be discover that there was an EAP, but that it was a diminished model or program that appeared to have a poor promotional plan?
Of course, the next thought is whether a more effective EAP model or promotional effort would have made a difference and saved some lives with effective outreach and solid supervisory referral processes taking place in the organization.
Is health insurance "cost containment" to prevent use of behavioral health benefits, as much as possible, really worth the risk of a diminished EAP delivery model? I don't think it is.
It's simple math. Remove regular EAP promotion, visibility, and the ability to offer "high touch" access to the workforce and you will destroy top-of-mind visibility for the EAP. You will see fewer referrals, less EAP involvement in the organization, less "thinking" about how to use the EAP in new ways, and few supervisor referrals to be sure. You will get more risk to the workplace, coworkers, and the financial well-being of the organization. Only if you have worked for internal EAPs, external EAPs, and office cubicle managed care EAPs, can you truly see the enormous difference in accessibility, utilization, and risk associated with these various contrasting models.
When you get home to tonight, look on the back of your spouse or partner's insurance card. See if there is a 1-800 # to the EAP or leads to an EAP once it is called.
Then ask yourself is this EAP working? And, for whom or what?
Get information to include in your EAP Refresher Training Program here. Increase your supervisor reach and effectiveness of supervisor referral processes in your CT-EAP.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Getting Spit On? Call the EAP!
Finally, I found an amazing and dramatic illustration of the topic I like to harp on most -- having EAPs identify and then make use of opportunities that suddenly and dramatically emerge in the workplace where the EAP solution can be applied. When EAPs do this, they grow their value and reputation, and if they are lucky enough, come in contact with major stake holders who have enormous clout. These stake holders -- property casualty insurers are one -- can elevate EAPs dramatically.
Can you guess how days the average bus driver in New York City took off last year after they were spit on by bus riding customers? The average time off was 64 days!!!!! One took off 191 days. No, these are not drivers to be disciplined for gross abuse of leave policies. They are getting paid by workers' compensation!
Amazing you say? Indeed. It's costing tens of thousands of dollars right out of the city coffers. And many of these drivers are claiming they need psychological help as a result of the pedestrian abuse they experience. Here is a link to the story.
What's the issue, and is there an EAP solution for the drivers, the public (indirectly), and the financial crisis associated with this workers' compensation nightmare? I think there is, or at least I hope you walk away from this blog with the idea that you can find untold numbers of opportunities to make yourself more useful and valued in the EAP setting. (And by the way, fear not, you won't have managed care competing with you for these classic applications of the core technology. It is off their "grid" entirely.)
Off the top of my head, the EAP should be included in a round table discussion with top management and review the data associated with these incidents. Specifically, what should be determined are patterns associated with everything from time of day these incidents occur, profiles of the spitting customers, antecedent and provocative events, worker profiles, and other variables that may point to behavioral interventions appropriate for the EAP.
For example - EAPs have skills or can closely coordinate with resources that have the skills to provide stress interventions for these cases, education on managing emotions, behavioral interface with customers, how to diffuse violence (which of course is what we are talking about when it comes to spitting). And, what about customer service? Dealing with angry and abuse customers? (see fact sheet).
How many bus drivers are depressed, alcoholic, or experience other behavioral problems exacerbated by these types of stressful incidents? What about anger management training or examining customer service issues that help employees avoid responding or provoking inappropriate behavior from people? There many more issues to examine here. Are more men than women assaulted. What's the difference? What about processing anger in groups and learning skills.
The violence of spitting on a bus driver surely is a crime. And law enforcement must play a powerful role. However, there are psycho-medical and dynamic behavioral issues at play with the larger problem, and of course, the enormous expense of workers' compensation costs demand a comprehensive attack on the problem.
The EAP is part of the solution. At least, this is much is true before I am willing to say there is not: Completely omitting any consideration of an EAP role in dealing with this problem is financially irresponsible.
Now, if the EAP is being considered at all, and no one has suggested, we need to ask why?
This problem lies at the feet of the profession. And here lies the answer to a new dawn for employee assistance programs. Am I wrong?
Can you guess how days the average bus driver in New York City took off last year after they were spit on by bus riding customers? The average time off was 64 days!!!!! One took off 191 days. No, these are not drivers to be disciplined for gross abuse of leave policies. They are getting paid by workers' compensation!
Amazing you say? Indeed. It's costing tens of thousands of dollars right out of the city coffers. And many of these drivers are claiming they need psychological help as a result of the pedestrian abuse they experience. Here is a link to the story.
What's the issue, and is there an EAP solution for the drivers, the public (indirectly), and the financial crisis associated with this workers' compensation nightmare? I think there is, or at least I hope you walk away from this blog with the idea that you can find untold numbers of opportunities to make yourself more useful and valued in the EAP setting. (And by the way, fear not, you won't have managed care competing with you for these classic applications of the core technology. It is off their "grid" entirely.)
Off the top of my head, the EAP should be included in a round table discussion with top management and review the data associated with these incidents. Specifically, what should be determined are patterns associated with everything from time of day these incidents occur, profiles of the spitting customers, antecedent and provocative events, worker profiles, and other variables that may point to behavioral interventions appropriate for the EAP.
For example - EAPs have skills or can closely coordinate with resources that have the skills to provide stress interventions for these cases, education on managing emotions, behavioral interface with customers, how to diffuse violence (which of course is what we are talking about when it comes to spitting). And, what about customer service? Dealing with angry and abuse customers? (see fact sheet).
How many bus drivers are depressed, alcoholic, or experience other behavioral problems exacerbated by these types of stressful incidents? What about anger management training or examining customer service issues that help employees avoid responding or provoking inappropriate behavior from people? There many more issues to examine here. Are more men than women assaulted. What's the difference? What about processing anger in groups and learning skills.
The violence of spitting on a bus driver surely is a crime. And law enforcement must play a powerful role. However, there are psycho-medical and dynamic behavioral issues at play with the larger problem, and of course, the enormous expense of workers' compensation costs demand a comprehensive attack on the problem.
The EAP is part of the solution. At least, this is much is true before I am willing to say there is not: Completely omitting any consideration of an EAP role in dealing with this problem is financially irresponsible.
Now, if the EAP is being considered at all, and no one has suggested, we need to ask why?
This problem lies at the feet of the profession. And here lies the answer to a new dawn for employee assistance programs. Am I wrong?
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Air Force Suicide Prevention Worked
Suicides are down and the intervention program worked. That's the conclusion of a research study just released by the University of Rochester Medical Center and published in the American Journal of Public Health. The program being proclaimed successful dropped the suicide rate by over 20%. The suicide prevention program with the U.S. Air Force began in 1994, but suicide rates were examined from the period 1981 - 2008.
Lessons from the study. To decrease the rate of suicide, the U.S. Air Force concentrated on four key components: 1) Encouraging members of the Air Force to seek help; 2) Promoting the development of coping skills; 3) Fighting the stigma associated with receiving mental health care; and 4) stressing the absence of negative career consequences for seeking and receiving treatment. The Air Force Suicide Prevention Program is included in all military training. Supervisor training is a key component of the program with leadership getting instruction in how and when to refer subordinate personnel to help. If any traumatic events, especially those related terrorism occur, they are responded to rapidly to address acute and posttraumatic stress, a known major contributing factor to the risk of suicide risk. The number of suicides prior to the study going back to 1994 were 64 in that year. The program low during the implementation period of the program was 1999 with a total of 20 suicides. (Note: There has been no reduction in the suicide rate among the general U.S. civilian population since the 1940s according to the study.)
Blog Note: Currently the U.S. Army is undergoing service wide training in an effort to reduce the suicide rate among its ranks.
Suicide prevention education module in PowerPoint, PowerPoint with sound, Flash video, and DVD, with script notes for the PowerPoint formats can be found at WorkExcel.com, Suicide Prevention Training. (Used by many federal government agencies, Fortune 500 companies, the U.S. Senate, and smaller businesses.)
Lessons from the study. To decrease the rate of suicide, the U.S. Air Force concentrated on four key components: 1) Encouraging members of the Air Force to seek help; 2) Promoting the development of coping skills; 3) Fighting the stigma associated with receiving mental health care; and 4) stressing the absence of negative career consequences for seeking and receiving treatment. The Air Force Suicide Prevention Program is included in all military training. Supervisor training is a key component of the program with leadership getting instruction in how and when to refer subordinate personnel to help. If any traumatic events, especially those related terrorism occur, they are responded to rapidly to address acute and posttraumatic stress, a known major contributing factor to the risk of suicide risk. The number of suicides prior to the study going back to 1994 were 64 in that year. The program low during the implementation period of the program was 1999 with a total of 20 suicides. (Note: There has been no reduction in the suicide rate among the general U.S. civilian population since the 1940s according to the study.)
Blog Note: Currently the U.S. Army is undergoing service wide training in an effort to reduce the suicide rate among its ranks.
Suicide prevention education module in PowerPoint, PowerPoint with sound, Flash video, and DVD, with script notes for the PowerPoint formats can be found at WorkExcel.com, Suicide Prevention Training. (Used by many federal government agencies, Fortune 500 companies, the U.S. Senate, and smaller businesses.)
Monday, May 10, 2010
EAPs to the Rescue with Workers' Compensation Fraud?
One of my favorite subjects is business insurance. I like to watch news, press releases, and blogs reporting on the many aspects of this field. As I have often opined, business insurance is a stake holder of effective, core technology employee assistance programs. The only problem is, they don't know it. That's the fault of EAPs as a group.
Insurance protects businesses and producers sell insurance. Your bridge to meet these employers and establish yourself is one of following three professionals who know a business owner best: the lawyer, the accountant, or the insurance agent. Insurance agents are your best bet because of synergies associated with the their needs, business needs, and the purpose of EAPs are nicely melded. They must all be concerned about human behavior in the workplace that leads to risk and financial loss.
Who pays for the legal bills of employees sued for sexual harassment? Who pays for the workers' compensation costs associated with sexual harassment (yes, harassed workers have often collected money for sexual harassment) and who will lose money if lawsuits come for sexual harassment? The answer is business insurers. Of course, employers pay too, if insured, through high deductibles.
There are many types of business insurance and there are many behavioral risk exposures that business insurance is designed to address. EAPs interface with many of them.
So the logic is there to team up with this group. Get started. Start in Colorado, or at least follow this legislation to see where it goes an how much influence it carries. Here's the news.
One of the insurance writers I follow is Gary Boop. He writes for "About.com". Gary reported today on a piece of legislation working its way through the Statehouse in the Colorado. The politicians there are focused on prohibiting workers compensation insurers from spying on or doing clandestine surveillance of employees injured on workers' compensation. This technique of finding employees who are stealing money from employers by faking injuries and collecting fat paychecks has been used for decades to reduce workers' compensation costs. Do you know the ramification of such legislation? They are potentially great and it means news skills and capabilities are going to be important to reducing costs. That's where you come in.
Consider this New Colorado bill H.B. 1012
What does this have to do with EAPs? I hope you see the connection, but let me spell it out clearly for you. Limitation of an employer's ability to investigate fraud means there must be some other way to find it, but even better, a renewed interest in preventing it will obviously be on the horizon.
Instead of ignoring injured employees and then seeking to discover criminal malingering to collect benefits, heading these problems off at the pass will get more scrutiny.
I predict that someday a business service will emerge that will be funded by workers' compensation insurers, and that it will play the following role. It will operate confidentially and
EAPs typically don't do these things now, but they could add these services to their continuum of activities and get enormous credit for doing so.
If you have entertained the idea of looking more at the EAP/Workers' Compensation interface, and you happen to service employees in Colorado, run don't walk, to develop your capabilities of servicing these employees with the goal of monitoring their care so they are less likely to fall prey to the temptation of malingering.
Of course, sometimes injuries are very real, except bogus injuries or injuries that were very real at the time become easy to lie about once their pain and debilitating symptoms disappear.
Any thoughts about this? See the drift?
Insurance protects businesses and producers sell insurance. Your bridge to meet these employers and establish yourself is one of following three professionals who know a business owner best: the lawyer, the accountant, or the insurance agent. Insurance agents are your best bet because of synergies associated with the their needs, business needs, and the purpose of EAPs are nicely melded. They must all be concerned about human behavior in the workplace that leads to risk and financial loss.
Who pays for the legal bills of employees sued for sexual harassment? Who pays for the workers' compensation costs associated with sexual harassment (yes, harassed workers have often collected money for sexual harassment) and who will lose money if lawsuits come for sexual harassment? The answer is business insurers. Of course, employers pay too, if insured, through high deductibles.
There are many types of business insurance and there are many behavioral risk exposures that business insurance is designed to address. EAPs interface with many of them.
So the logic is there to team up with this group. Get started. Start in Colorado, or at least follow this legislation to see where it goes an how much influence it carries. Here's the news.
One of the insurance writers I follow is Gary Boop. He writes for "About.com". Gary reported today on a piece of legislation working its way through the Statehouse in the Colorado. The politicians there are focused on prohibiting workers compensation insurers from spying on or doing clandestine surveillance of employees injured on workers' compensation. This technique of finding employees who are stealing money from employers by faking injuries and collecting fat paychecks has been used for decades to reduce workers' compensation costs. Do you know the ramification of such legislation? They are potentially great and it means news skills and capabilities are going to be important to reducing costs. That's where you come in.
Consider this New Colorado bill H.B. 1012
What does this have to do with EAPs? I hope you see the connection, but let me spell it out clearly for you. Limitation of an employer's ability to investigate fraud means there must be some other way to find it, but even better, a renewed interest in preventing it will obviously be on the horizon.
Instead of ignoring injured employees and then seeking to discover criminal malingering to collect benefits, heading these problems off at the pass will get more scrutiny.
I predict that someday a business service will emerge that will be funded by workers' compensation insurers, and that it will play the following role. It will operate confidentially and
- Meet with employees to assess the emotional impact of their injuries,
- Do a family assessment to determine likely areas of distress and conflict at risk for protracting an injury,
- Conduct an occupational alcoholism assessment,
- Help an employee remain motivated and anticipating a return to work,
- Resolve conflicts between an injured employee and the boss or coworkers back at the worksite,
- Offer support for the injured employee during the period of time they are off work,
- Offer guidance, tips, and support upon return to duty so employees experience reduced anxiety and conflict associated with return to light duty or full duty assignments.
EAPs typically don't do these things now, but they could add these services to their continuum of activities and get enormous credit for doing so.
If you have entertained the idea of looking more at the EAP/Workers' Compensation interface, and you happen to service employees in Colorado, run don't walk, to develop your capabilities of servicing these employees with the goal of monitoring their care so they are less likely to fall prey to the temptation of malingering.
Of course, sometimes injuries are very real, except bogus injuries or injuries that were very real at the time become easy to lie about once their pain and debilitating symptoms disappear.
Any thoughts about this? See the drift?
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Resolving Coworker Conflicts - Done
Resolving coworker conflicts is something many employee assistance professionals are well skilled at doing. However, many EAPs don't advertise or promote this service. You should think about doing so to improve your worth and perceived value. Providing education on resolving coworker conflicts can increase your visibility for this service and EAP utilization, but the really good news is that such help to the organization brings with it big returns that may help you stick around. You will notice that many of the products and services at WorkExcel.com are designed to help EAPs be more valuable. For example, doing Stress Management Secrets for Supervisors was not an accident. It was produced to get EAPs closer to the decision makers.
To offer a promotional and educational tool, available in five formats, I recently created new product on Resolving Coworker Conflicts. You can see it here. Feel free to give me a call if you have any questions. This program will elevate the visibility of your EAP and reduce risk to your host organization(s.)
Are you interested in possibly cutting your newsletter expenses in half or more? FrontLine Employee newsletter can do it. In PDF format, or print as needed, it can save you money and give you a completely customizable wellness newsletter program. Learn more about it here.
To offer a promotional and educational tool, available in five formats, I recently created new product on Resolving Coworker Conflicts. You can see it here. Feel free to give me a call if you have any questions. This program will elevate the visibility of your EAP and reduce risk to your host organization(s.)
Are you interested in possibly cutting your newsletter expenses in half or more? FrontLine Employee newsletter can do it. In PDF format, or print as needed, it can save you money and give you a completely customizable wellness newsletter program. Learn more about it here.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Are You Doing the Right Kind of Stress Management (link)
About a year and half a go, Watson Wyatt Worldwide, a leading global-wide consulting firm, surveyed employers and discovered that stress was the number one reason employees quit their jobs.
Watson Wyatt is a major benefits consulting firm, so their interest was in learning more about this workplace issue. They discovered that most employers weren't doing much about stress. Two surveys conducted by Watson Wyatt confirmed it.
The strange thing is that most employers did not cite stress as the key reason employees quit. Stress did not make it into the top five reasons. Most employers listed things like insufficient pay, lack of career development, or poor supervisor relationships as the reasons employees quit. Employees were saying it was other things.
The bottom line is that if you are doing stress management in companies and want to make the most impact, you must target the source of stress in your EAP interventions. According to the research from Watson Wyatt, the target sources of stress that increase the risk of employees leaving include the following, some of which you may be able to address, and others, perhaps not.
Note: The second number is the percentage of employers acting to help employees with this stress related issue.
Long hours, doing more with less - 48% of employees say this is a problem. (Only 5% of employers doing anything about it.)
Work/Life Balance - 32% (16%)
Technologies that expand work - 29% (6%)
Manager's inability to recognized stress - 24% (7%)
Manager's inability to find solutions for stress - 20% (14%)
Extra time, hassles related to security - 8% (2%)
Safety fears - 5% (27%)
The numbers give some clues. It may be easy to focus on dealing with security or saftey fears of employees, but there may be nothing employers can do to help employees who are forced to do more with less. The interesting set of numbers above is "Manager's Inability to Recognize Stress". It's rated high as an employee complaint, but it is low as a point of intervention from the employer's perspective.
There is appreciable room to help managers and supervisors understand stress better, its effects, the impact it has on employees, what to do about it, signs and symptoms in employees, and factors associated with supevisor-supervisee communiation that undoubtedly contributed to it.
When doing stress management consider laser targeted interventions to be more effective. Source: Press Release, "Few Employers Address Workplace Stress", contact Steven Arnoff at steven.arnoff@watsonwyatt.com
Watson Wyatt is a major benefits consulting firm, so their interest was in learning more about this workplace issue. They discovered that most employers weren't doing much about stress. Two surveys conducted by Watson Wyatt confirmed it.
The strange thing is that most employers did not cite stress as the key reason employees quit. Stress did not make it into the top five reasons. Most employers listed things like insufficient pay, lack of career development, or poor supervisor relationships as the reasons employees quit. Employees were saying it was other things.
The bottom line is that if you are doing stress management in companies and want to make the most impact, you must target the source of stress in your EAP interventions. According to the research from Watson Wyatt, the target sources of stress that increase the risk of employees leaving include the following, some of which you may be able to address, and others, perhaps not.
Note: The second number is the percentage of employers acting to help employees with this stress related issue.
Long hours, doing more with less - 48% of employees say this is a problem. (Only 5% of employers doing anything about it.)
Work/Life Balance - 32% (16%)
Technologies that expand work - 29% (6%)
Manager's inability to recognized stress - 24% (7%)
Manager's inability to find solutions for stress - 20% (14%)
Extra time, hassles related to security - 8% (2%)
Safety fears - 5% (27%)
The numbers give some clues. It may be easy to focus on dealing with security or saftey fears of employees, but there may be nothing employers can do to help employees who are forced to do more with less. The interesting set of numbers above is "Manager's Inability to Recognize Stress". It's rated high as an employee complaint, but it is low as a point of intervention from the employer's perspective.
There is appreciable room to help managers and supervisors understand stress better, its effects, the impact it has on employees, what to do about it, signs and symptoms in employees, and factors associated with supevisor-supervisee communiation that undoubtedly contributed to it.
When doing stress management consider laser targeted interventions to be more effective. Source: Press Release, "Few Employers Address Workplace Stress", contact Steven Arnoff at steven.arnoff@watsonwyatt.com
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
New EAP Professionals and Orientation to Alcoholism (Ouch!)
It is safe to say that discussing alcoholism with any professional in the treatment field, EAP field, or other helping industry will generate some argument and controversy. Just wait. If you are new to the field, you'll soon be indoctrinated with one of these cocktail conversations.
It's one of the "elephants in the living room" of the helping profession. One out of four people has an addict in their family, and myth and mythology over thousands of years keeps intervention, treatment, and recovery confusing and controversial.
From non-M.D. psychologists who are selected to be the U.S. Supreme Court consultants, who then push the idea that alcoholism is not a disease, to best selling authors telling us how alcoholics can drink safely, there is simply no shortage of information and "new thought" about alcoholism that continues to undermine the legitimacy of this disease and how it should be managed.
Of course, if you have worked directly with alcoholics in treatment, you are prized material for being hired as an EAP staffer. It means you have been in the trenches, faced the defense mechanisms, and hopefully have been mentored by recovering persons (if you are not recovering yourself) who adhere to abstinence principles and 12-step programming as the most effective way to manage this chronic disease.
(It is truly amazing that when I blog on this topic, I get rabid members of Rational Recovery threatening to turn off my free speech rights with their conspiracy theories about AA.)
If you are new to the EAP field, and have not been in the trenches of alcoholism, there are few things you need to know.
First, don't think that understanding alcoholism or writing about it as new EAP professional will be an easy scrabble. The economics and politics of alcoholism diagnosis, causation, treatment, and ongoing recovery are profound , convoluted, and continue unabated.
Before you get into a discussion about alcoholism, do a few things that are really critical to your edification and orientation.
1. Go to a dozen or so open AA meetings and get oriented to "recovery think". Know what recovering people read, and have your own library of this material. (Also purchase alternative and controversial materials that argue against AA so you can see their rationalization and desperation to avoid what AA is about.) Memorize the twelve steps. You don't want to be caught unable to converse about the 5th step, the 4th step, or the conflict in treatment programs that push patients to go to the 4th step instead sticking with only the first three. (See what I mean?)
Not having this information will also cause issues with your clients who will expect for you to know more than they do about recovery initially.
2. Visit the Web site of the American Society on Addiction Medicine at http://asam.org. There is a ton of stuff on this site. Read their position papers. This association represents about four thousand medical doctors who are the leading authorities on addictive disease, alcoholism, and its treatment. They don't get a lot of press. Probably because they get a lot of folks upset who would otherwise report on their opinions. There is a simple explanation: Science and research simply don't mix well with the popular culture, which has a 5000 year head start ahead of them.
It is popular culture that drives belief systems about the disease. You need to separate the wheat from the shaft if you are going to work in this field effectively.
There a lot of people making money off of alcoholics. Whether it's trying to do psychotherapy with them while they are still drinking or drugging, selling them gimmicks, pushing alternative group therapies and "not-necessarily-abstinence" groups, pop-psych ideas about how to drink normally, etc., there is no end to the influx of confusion and interference that keeps alcoholism from being accepted by everyone (like cancer) that it is an authentic, chronic disease that requires abstinence to arrest its progression.
3. Read "Under the Influence" by James Milam and Katherine Ketchum. Still about $5.95 a paperback copy, it is a fascinating book that explains alcoholism as a chronic, genetically based illness so well, it is hard to put it down. Not sure if the author's original, self-published book, 'The Emergent Comprehensive Concept of Alcoholism" is still around, but if you find it, it will blow your mind about the economics and the forces in our larger society that have a vested interest in your not believing that this is a true disease.
Okay that's enough to blog about today, don't you think!
It's one of the "elephants in the living room" of the helping profession. One out of four people has an addict in their family, and myth and mythology over thousands of years keeps intervention, treatment, and recovery confusing and controversial.
From non-M.D. psychologists who are selected to be the U.S. Supreme Court consultants, who then push the idea that alcoholism is not a disease, to best selling authors telling us how alcoholics can drink safely, there is simply no shortage of information and "new thought" about alcoholism that continues to undermine the legitimacy of this disease and how it should be managed.
Of course, if you have worked directly with alcoholics in treatment, you are prized material for being hired as an EAP staffer. It means you have been in the trenches, faced the defense mechanisms, and hopefully have been mentored by recovering persons (if you are not recovering yourself) who adhere to abstinence principles and 12-step programming as the most effective way to manage this chronic disease.
(It is truly amazing that when I blog on this topic, I get rabid members of Rational Recovery threatening to turn off my free speech rights with their conspiracy theories about AA.)
If you are new to the EAP field, and have not been in the trenches of alcoholism, there are few things you need to know.
First, don't think that understanding alcoholism or writing about it as new EAP professional will be an easy scrabble. The economics and politics of alcoholism diagnosis, causation, treatment, and ongoing recovery are profound , convoluted, and continue unabated.
Before you get into a discussion about alcoholism, do a few things that are really critical to your edification and orientation.
1. Go to a dozen or so open AA meetings and get oriented to "recovery think". Know what recovering people read, and have your own library of this material. (Also purchase alternative and controversial materials that argue against AA so you can see their rationalization and desperation to avoid what AA is about.) Memorize the twelve steps. You don't want to be caught unable to converse about the 5th step, the 4th step, or the conflict in treatment programs that push patients to go to the 4th step instead sticking with only the first three. (See what I mean?)
Not having this information will also cause issues with your clients who will expect for you to know more than they do about recovery initially.
2. Visit the Web site of the American Society on Addiction Medicine at http://asam.org. There is a ton of stuff on this site. Read their position papers. This association represents about four thousand medical doctors who are the leading authorities on addictive disease, alcoholism, and its treatment. They don't get a lot of press. Probably because they get a lot of folks upset who would otherwise report on their opinions. There is a simple explanation: Science and research simply don't mix well with the popular culture, which has a 5000 year head start ahead of them.
It is popular culture that drives belief systems about the disease. You need to separate the wheat from the shaft if you are going to work in this field effectively.
There a lot of people making money off of alcoholics. Whether it's trying to do psychotherapy with them while they are still drinking or drugging, selling them gimmicks, pushing alternative group therapies and "not-necessarily-abstinence" groups, pop-psych ideas about how to drink normally, etc., there is no end to the influx of confusion and interference that keeps alcoholism from being accepted by everyone (like cancer) that it is an authentic, chronic disease that requires abstinence to arrest its progression.
3. Read "Under the Influence" by James Milam and Katherine Ketchum. Still about $5.95 a paperback copy, it is a fascinating book that explains alcoholism as a chronic, genetically based illness so well, it is hard to put it down. Not sure if the author's original, self-published book, 'The Emergent Comprehensive Concept of Alcoholism" is still around, but if you find it, it will blow your mind about the economics and the forces in our larger society that have a vested interest in your not believing that this is a true disease.
Okay that's enough to blog about today, don't you think!
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