HR, Benefit, and Risk Managers

You realize that your job is to provide good healthcare to your employees while being cost effective for your corporation.  It’s not easy and you work hard to accomplish it - against overwhelming odds.

Dr. Les Ruthven, Ph.D, experienced clinical psychologist, and CEO of Preferred Mental Health Management,Inc. understands this.

He has written a book to help you get the needed facts to lower the cost while increasing the effectiveness and quality of health care.

You may have to step off the moving walkway and blaze your own trail—but, you’ll be a hero to your personnel and to your corporation.

Look at a few statistics from Antidepressants: Science, Magic or Marketing:

• An estimated 17.5 million Americans have some form of depression.

• Untreated, depression costs American businesses as much as $43 billion annually in medical treatment, sick days, loss of productivity, disability, and employee turnover.

• When treated with antidepressants, the cost per PTE (patient treatment episode) came to $2,287.  Nondrug treatment (behavioral therapy) costs half that.  Over half (51.6%) of the drug-treated patients received prescriptions from four or more prescription drug groups.

• The treatment of major side effects associated with antidepressants increases the cost dramatically.

• Clinical trials show antidepressant drugs have minimal effectiveness in treating  depression and anxiety. These drugs do not treat the problems that caused the depression/anxiety in the first place.

One of our major quality health care problems is that the medical (drug) treatment of psychological problems is simply inappropriate.  And, illustrated above, it is not cost effective.  Further, the side effects are severe, as are the withdrawal symptoms.

--The solution?