For close to 25 years the Employee Assistance Programme of Bermuda has been helping those in need of personal and job-related counselling and support services.With 225 member companies that account for approximately 17,000 employees, roughly 26 percent of Bermuda’s population has access to the EAP’s services through their employers’ benefit offerings.This January, long-time mental health specialist Doris DeCosta replaced Martha Pitman as executive director after Mrs Pitman retired from the organisation where she had spent more than a decade.Ms DeCosta is no stranger to employee assistance work, having started an internal EAP at the Bermuda Hospitals Board and running it for 15 years. She went on to work with the Bermuda Police Service as its welfare officer for five years, offering counselling and crisis support.In her new position, Ms DeCosta, who is a licensed master social worker and a certified trauma services specialist, is looking to continue to help clients personally and professionally.“One of my major goals is to be very responsive to the needs of our clients,” she explained. “We live in a world now here in Bermuda where things have changed. We have shooting incidents now and a lot of different situations that never presented themselves many years ago, so we have to be responsive to what is happening in the community today.“We also need to look at new approaches to EAP. What’s new in the field, like telephone and Internet counselling, that we can bring here so that people continue to be interested in our services. I want to be responsive to our client companies but also to our individual employee clients.”EAP Bermuda has both local and international companies of all sizes on their roster from very large corporations to small shops as well as the Government. Many of their clients have been with the EAP since its inception.“It speaks to the confidence that our clients have in the EAP,” she said. “We have a legacy, we’ve been around the block for 24 years and we ride on a very good reputation.”From family and marital distress to substance and alcohol abuse, the EAP tackles a wide range of problems affecting employees as well as providing management consultations. Unhappy, sick or stressed employees can translate into a whole host of issues for their employers, including increased health costs, poor morale, tardiness, absenteeism, reduced productivity, accidents and safety violations, staff turnover and lost clients.According to Ms DeCosta, anonymity is paramount at the EAP. They have three waiting rooms and a strict protocol for appointments so clients don’t run into each other in the reception area.“Bermuda is small and people need to know that when they come here they are safe,” she said.If you thought that the organisation is underutilised in Bermuda, you’d be wrong.“People come in here all day, every day and every hour on the hour,” said Ms DeCosta, adding that the group has three full-time and one part-time counsellor. “We see every level of staff, we just don’t see managers or supervisors, we see everyone.“People think that Bermudians don’t come for counselling, but they do, and they come with very complex and serious problems. So for people to say that Bermudians don’t come for counselling I don’t believe that. That has not been my experience.“When I see the schedule every day, our counsellors have someone to see every hour until they leave, including myself. I carry a caseload as well.”Asked if she has seen any fallout from the current economic downturn, she said that the level of anxiety seems to have increased.“I find that people are very anxious about their job security,” she said. “I had a lady who came to me who said she really needed some time off but she didn’t want to do anything to mess up her job. I’m seeing a lot of that. I’m even seeing people who are sick that go to work anyway because they are afraid of losing their job.“Those are things that concern me because people are coming to work, they’re exhausted, they’re stressed but their focus is on keeping that job.”For those employees that do lose their jobs, the EAP also offers services to help them.“Even though they are no longer with the company, we give them at least four sessions to come in and talk about how they’ve been impacted by everything and how they need to move forward,” she said.However, the counsellors, she added, don’t see a lot of people using their redundancy service.“I think once people leave their company, they don’t want to have anything to do with that group they just go do what they have to do. But I think people should try and take advantage of the service.”