HTS: COPE

COPE is a novel interactive program to address stress & depression. You access the most effective cognitive therapeutic insights with a touch-tone telephone. Over the last six years, we have built and tested a program that models the best patient interviews and the most effective insights into depression. When you dial up COPE our (proprietary) branching logic guides you through a series of interviews and exercises (suggested by leading psychiatrists in their own voices). You choose the gender of the voice that you hear. It picks up where you left off at the last phone call. You can understand your response to stress, depression and ways to help yourself. It approaches the effectiveness of the best cognitive therapists without the work time lost in keeping counseling or therapy appointments.

COPE is an ideal tool for Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) because it is completely private. No medical records, insurance forms or externally identifiable information fields are created. Individuals can call COPE's toll free number from home or the road in complete privacy. COPE is available 24 hours a day; it helps individuals when help is most needed, on their schedule, with or without a doctor's care. It is clinically appropriate for individuals to use to overcome sadness, stress and depression. COPE is uniquely cost effective in an EAP setting because it requires no human intervention, yet it is remarkably supportive. COPE can also be customized for any workplace; referring individuals to more active interventions, for example.

Employees can call the Mental Health Screener® (MHS) to take an interactive self-assessment for mood, anxiety, alcohol and eating disorders. The MHS was developed and clinically validated by Healthcare Technology Systems, Inc., and the validation was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1997. The MHS is also designed to allow EAPs to customize features for their workplace needs. Benefits administrators can choose to permit employees to hear subjective assessments over the phone; have them faxed to employees or their physicians; and can have aggregate statistics prepared for their workforce.

High tech and white-collar employers will find COPE particularly attractive because more of their employees will find this novel interface to be logical; the unlimited, unmonitored access compelling; and its complete privacy reassuring.

It has been tested extensively and used to treat patients with major depression in England, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin. In our open trial of COPE (people selected COPE who'd been diagnosed as depressed) 82% of these people stayed with the program to completion. More importantly, 64% of these completers saw their depression test scores (on HAM-D, the Hamilton Depression Index) fall by more than 50% by the end of a twelve-week program and 75% said that COPE had a positive effect on their lives.