Many employers offer a health insurance employee assistance program that will be available to all employees and their family members to use, in conjunction with any health insurance. This EAP is typically free to use and can offer short term counseling for any number of topics.

If your employer offers health insurance, they probably have an EAP too. This is a service that they have pre-paid for and is contracted by a third party. Many employers offer this as a way of helping to improve employee morale. Employees who suffer with conflicts at home often perform less than average at work, which is why these programs have been offered.

The employer will give you a hotline number to call, and you will need to enter your social security number or employee number to verify that you do work for the company in order to qualify for the health insurance employee assistance program. Anything that you share with the counselors on the phone does not go back to your employer, so you are able to speak your mind.

These counselors are trained professionals and can offer you short-term counseling for any number of topics. They can talk to you about major life events, financial or legal concerns, relationship issues, substance abuse issues and any number of other topics. The advice that you can get from these programs can be very beneficial in getting your life on track and help you to perform better at your job too.

Confidentiality is maintained at all times, because they are under state regulations to do so. This means that you can talk about issues related to your job, your concern for safety or any number of things without consequence from your employer - because your employer will never find out. This can become especially important in cases of depression caused by workplace harassment or sexual harassment by a superior.

When you have a sounding board and a way of discussing these issues with a trained professional, you can often feel a lot of stress lift away. It has been proven that those with lower levels of stress have less anxiety issues, can breathe easier and are generally healthier.

Some of the other EAP benefits are assessments in regards to your personal health and health of your employment. You can learn about ways to be a better employee or learn to become healthier as a person through these assessments. When you take them, many offer different free seminars that you can take that will help you reach some goals that you were able to define. These can include weight management, stress management, active listening and much more.