Ask Dr. Katharina Koch: Why Does Quality Matter In Mental Health And How To Spot It?

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Every month, we'll be bringing you three commonly asked questions on a range of mental health topics, answered by Katharina Koch, PhD , a Clinical Psychologist certified in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Head of Psychology here at nilo.health.

In this edition, Katharina shares insights into frequently asked questions about the quality of mental health care at work. Let's dive in!

How do I know if mental health support is high quality?

There are some important features you can look for in any mental health benefit to know whether it’s high quality. Some important features include:

• Science-Based and Accredited Resources: Ensure resources are science-based and accredited.

• Qualified Professionals: Psychologists should be carefully vetted and have leading qualifications, expertise, and experience.

• Research-Led Activities: Any activities should be research-led, and you should ask about the science behind the benefit.

• High-Quality Features: Look at the features the mental health benefit offers, and whether those features are offered at a high quality.

• Evaluating Quality: Finding answers to these questions will help you evaluate the quality of the support. Ask similar questions about all features to ensure everything is research-based and highly trained.

For more help in choosing a high quality mental health benefit, you could take a look at our guide.

What are the risks if I don’t consider quality when deciding for a mental health benefit?

• Unexpected consequences: Just like poor healthcare for your physical health, poor mental healthcare comes with serious risks. In the worst case scenario, someone who truly needs mental health care might go under the radar and end up needing serious, emergency and indefinite medical care.
• Unmet Needs: Employees might not get the help they need or receive unqualified help, worsening the situation.
• Lack of Engagement: A bad product won’t create the engagement needed for results and positive feedback from your team.

• Increased Stigma: Poor support may increase stigma around mental health and create a psychologically unsafe environment. It will be harder to get people onboard for actually effective mental healthcare in the future.
• Poor ROI: And of course, if you invest in something low quality you won’t see a big return on investment. If you pick poor quality mental health care, the best case scenario is that nothing at all will change. So you’ll effectively just be burning money.

Why is it important to have diverse options for mental health support, like one-to-one sessions, group sessions, roundtable discussions, self-guided lessons and more?

Mental health is a journey, and everyone is at a different point on that journey.

It’s also useful to think of mental health as a spectrum, where some people might need crisis support while others need preventative care or help building resilience, or healthy habits.

And on top of these points, everyone is an individual, with their own diverse preferences, and different people respond well to different types of therapy. 

For example, one person might not be ready to open up to a psychologist about their personal and professional issues. But if they spend some time with self-guided digital reflections or even meditating, they might become more comfortable with the idea of talking to a professional or more familiar with the topic of mental health itself.

High quality mental health support recognizes this diversity, and offers a diverse range of therapies to match!

Have more questions for Katharina? Send them here

Curious about how nilo does quality mental health support? let's chat.

Until next time,

Your favourite mental health bestie,

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