Recent research confirms the effectiveness of counselling available through the work place.
52% of respondents in a survey by FirstAssist (part of the Capita Group) reported that without psychotherapeutic intervention provided by their employer they would have had to take time off work.
The number of people who felt that their ability to cope with the demands of their job rose from 17% before they received counselling, to 64% afterwards.
Significantly, only 9% of respondents reported that their personal lives were ‘good’ or ‘very good’ before counselling, compared to 57% afterwards. This impressive leap indicates that counselling has a very positive effect, not only on life at work, but also on the personal lives of employees – which indirectly also impacts on performance at work.
Colleagues will also benefit, with 23% of respondents describing work relationships as ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ before counselling, dropping to only 2% afterwards.
For employers, this survey provides further evidence of the cost effectiveness of psychotherapy and counselling being offered through employee assistance programmes.
If you would like to arrange for psychotherapy to be made available in your place of work, please click here.
Stress is at the extreme end of emotional regulation. It is a state of high arousal, from which a person is struggling to recover. Perhaps the cause of the stress is serious and on-going or sometimes the person does not have the psychological resources, for whatever reason, to regulate their experiences.
When a person is confronted by a situation that appears overwhelming or too difficult to cope with, the brain releases a number of chemicals in response.
The amygdala (which operates rather like a smoke detector in detecting potential danger) activates the hypothalamus, which in turn triggers the stress response – sometimes described as the HPA axis (hypothalamus triggers pituitary, which triggers the adrenal glands).
The adrenal glands then secrete additional cortisol to help the person to cope. The cortisol sends a message to other parts of the body system, warning that there is a crisis and requiring these other parts of the system to shut down so that there is sufficient energy available to deal with the situation.
This is very useful in the short term. However, in the long term, too much cortisol becomes a serious problem. For example, cortisol reduces the effectiveness of our immunity system.
Messages from the hippocampus that it is receiving too much cortisol are not properly received, so the system continues to secrete cortisol, leaving stress permanently stuck in the ‘on’ position. This makes it very difficult for a person to recover from stress, even when the immediate cause of the stress has passed.
Long term stress also undermines memory and learning, so that a person can start to appear as stupid.
To switch off the defectively operating ‘smoke detector’ amygdala the medial prefrontal cortex needs to intervene. Although there are techniques that can help with this, if there is an ongoing underlying cause of the stress, this too will need to be addressed.
When the system is under so much stress, it is goes without saying that the person involved needs to be provided with appropriate support.
If you are stressed and would like to talk to someone about receiving help with it, please click here.
