A Quick Guide To Understanding EAP

You might get a yearly physical or a yearly car inspection, so why not take advantage of some free therapy sessions to fine tune your mental wellbeing!  

What is EAP?

Have you heard of this acronym before? EAP stands for Employee Assistance Program, and it is something that your employer may offer as a benefit to all employees. Your employer may have contracted with another company to offer FREE THERAPY SESSIONS (!!!!) to employees. This benefit would be in addition to your regular health insurance. Most EAPs authorize several (typically 3-6) free therapy sessions at no cost to the employee. Your employer is NOT informed of if you use this benefit or not, so it will in no way affect your employment.  “Authorize” might sound sort of scary, but what it means is that the EAP office collects your name, contact info, and a brief description of what you’d like to address in therapy.  Again, your employer DOES NOT KNOW this information!  The EAP office could suggest local providers to you that they partner with, or you can request to see a certain therapist to use those EAP benefits with. After you decide who you want to use the EAP benefits with, the EAP office will send that practice the information they gathered from you, to confirm how many sessions they will cover at no charge to you. 

How do EAP sessions work?

Most offices that accept EAP benefits are able to schedule you for your first appointment within 3-5 business days. So, the time you might wait for a therapy appointment could be reduced significantly! These EAP sessions are typically shorter than a typical therapy appointment, usually ranging between 25 and 40 minutes long (rather than closer to an hour in duration). Although sessions would be slightly shorter, you can still benefit a lot from each session!  You would still be seeing a therapist.... you’d still be addressing whatever issue you’d like to work on.  And, these sessions are still confidential! And…..you would be able to benefit from several therapy sessions at no cost to you! In case you can’t tell, EAP benefits can be quite awesome! In these sessions, you could identify concerns, your goals, your strengths and gather insight into yourself, your thoughts and behaviors at no out of pocket cost to you.  You could also use this brief therapy to address situational concerns such as the loss of a loved one, or holiday stress.  And if you want to continue therapy services after you’ve use those authorized EAP sessions, then you would just switch over to using your insurance or self pay. 

Who could use EAP benefits?

Especially if you’re unsure about therapy, or unsure about if you could benefit from therapy, or what it would look like, using EAP benefits is a really easy way to ease into therapy!  It’s a free benefit that is just sitting on the table if you’re not using it! If you’ve never considered therapy, you’re nervous about it, or you don’t know if it would be worth it to pay your co-pay, EAP would be a really great way to give therapy a try. EAP also can be great for issues that are related to certain stressors (like your teen going away to college), or issues that could be more short term in duration. Start by contacting your company’s HR department to see if you have EAP benefits, and if so, why not use the benefit?! Many EAPs authorize per calendar year, and so if you haven’t used your EAPs yet this year, what are you waiting for?  Some authorize per issue you are addressing, so you should explore that too with the EAP office.   Another perk…..EAP benefits may also be available to any of your family members to use too! So, the 3-6 sessions they may cover could be for each of your family members.

Contact us!

The Counseling Collective partners with several local EAP companies. Feel free to contact our office if you are interested in using your EAP benefits and aren’t sure where to start.

The mental health therapists at our office offer counseling for a variety of issues including trauma using EMDR, depression, anxiety, grief, and couples counseling. We work with teens, adults, and couples. We also offer online counseling services which can be great for people with busy schedules or for people who live in parts of Pennsylvania with limited counseling options. You can check out our website to see the full list of counseling services that we offer. Or, Request An Appointment here.