The impact of behavioral health is finally getting its moment inthe sun. As the shades of stigma are slowly lifted, people arebeginning to speak about mental health and substance usedisorders.

From the classrooms to the water coolers, thoughtful discussionsare occurring every day. Consider a paper released by Harvard Business School and the Stanford GraduateSchool of Business citing that workplace stress accounts fornearly 8 percent of the national spend on healthcare and adds up tobetween $125 and $190 billion spent in healthcare costs peryear.

Similarly, a study published in February 2015 by the Journal of ClinicalPsychiatry noted that depression is the leading cause ofdisability for U.S. adults ages 15-44 and results in nearly 400million disability days per year. These statistics indicate thatunmet behavioral health needs have a significant impact onworkforce productivity.

Given the challenges of addressing behavioral health in theworkplace, HR and benefits managers need benefit offerings topromote enhanced behavioral healthcare for their employees. Thesesolutions should target accessibility, availability, andaffordability.

Enter the rise of telehealth.

Telehealth is, quite simply, seeing a doctor or therapist viavideo on your phone, kiosk or web. Telehealth for behavioral healthis sometimes referred to tele-mental health, tele-psychiatry,tele-behavioral health or tele-therapy. It allows immediate,convenient access to care, alleviating the overwhelming feelingsthat often accompany patients dealing with a behavioral healthissue by stripping away the stigma of an in-person visit.

For patients – your employees – tele-therapy is provided byhigh-quality, licensed clinicians, with the opportunity forspecialized and multidisciplinary care. Not only is it moreaffordable than brick and mortar therapy, increasingly it iscovered by major insurers. The easy access to multiple providersreduces the uncertainty and confusion frequently experienced whensearching for a therapist, and eliminates the frustrationassociated with finding therapists who are not accepting newpatients. LiveHealth Online's psychology offering is one example of how an employee can simply and easily finda clinician and get started.

Telehealth addresses longstanding problems faced by consumers ofbehavioral health. For example, finding a therapist outside ofbusiness hours, when most working adults want an appointment, isvery challenging. Through telehealth, employees can accesstherapists after work from the comfort of their own homes, via ascheduled or on-demand visit. For those individuals who still feela stigma attached to therapy, telehealth provides a more privatesolution. Telehealth has also been shown to decrease the cost ofhealthcare through reduced traveling costs, improved management ofchronic disease, and shorter hospital stays and visits.

For employers, it delivers cost savings, specifically byreducing hospital admissions and readmissions as well as othermedical and behavioral health costs due to the early interventionmade possible by telehealth.. Moreover, employee satisfactionincreases, as employees appreciate the value of time saved from theconvenient access to therapy that more readily fits into thecomplexity of their schedules.

For example, Amwell for Behavioral Health places employees indirect contact with both therapists and psychiatrists who canprovide real time solutions to address employees' behavioral healthconcerns. Additionally, ancillary services such as strategicmarketing campaigns are offered to increase healthcareutilization.

Employers are jumping on board. Willis Towers Watson estimates that nearly 80percent of employers are expected to offer telehealth asa part of their health benefit offerings by 2018. Our recentemployer benchmark survey found that 50% of employers specificallywant to offer behavioral health through telehealth.

Through telehealth, employers can provide direct access tobehavioral health services more efficiently, thereby increasingworkforce wellness and employee productivity.

To learn more about how benefits managers are implementingtelehealth for behavioral health and other services at theircompanies, download the 2016 Employer Benchmark Survey eBookhere.