University Times

Darlene felt like a fat, ugly loser. Recently divorced, she had moved back to Pittsburgh with her children and was again living with her parents — a strained arrangement for everyone involved. Darlene had a demanding new job at Presbyterian University Hospital, made even more stressful by the harassing phone calls she was getting at the office from her ex-husband.

Vicky's home life was healthy, but her job as an administrator at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) was making her sick.

She was putting in 12-14 hour days, often six days a week, struggling with an increasing workload that left her feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. She was considering resigning.

Both women turned to the Employee Assistance Program for help. Both credit EAP with helping them turn their lives around.

EAP offers free, confidential counseling and referral services for personal and job-related problems. One of the longest-established programs of its kind in western Pennsylvania, EAP started at Presby 25 years ago and UPMC employees have had access to the program for years.

This week, EAP officially was extended to all Pitt personnel, including regular full- and part-time faculty and staff, their families and members of their households.

A brochure describing EAP services will be enclosed with October Pitt paychecks. The brochure states that EAP counselors and resources can help University employees and members of their families and households to: * Manage stress.

* Resolve problems in a marriage, including domestic violence.

* Address family problems, including drugs and alcohol.

* Handle parenting and child care concerns.

* Manage financial difficulties.

* Cope with the illness or death of a loved one.

* Adapt to a new home or work situation.

* Deal with depression or anxiety.

* Resolve conflicts with co-workers and supervisors.

Counseling sessions and other services are confidential, said EAP director Carolyn Maue. Documents relating to an employee's use of the program are kept separate from other personnel records for that employee, including health records, Maue said.

EAP's fifth floor suite in the Medical Arts Building has widely separated entrance and exit doors to make sure that people in waiting areas do not cross paths with clients coming out of counseling sessions.

The program's hours are 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., with evening hours by appointment.

Employees and members of their families and households can call EAP at 647-3EAP (or 1-800-647-3EAP) to speak with counselors and/or schedule appointments.

Counselors also will consult with employees who believe a friend or colleague at Pitt could benefit from EAP.

Supervisors may refer employees to EAP to help resolve job performance problems. If an employee agrees to enter the program at his or her supervisor's recommendation, the supervisor may be told whether the employee is attending counseling sessions and following an agreed-upon plan of corrective action. But no other client information is given to the supervisor.

Pitt's Human Resources office estimates that EAP will cost the University $160,000 in the program's first full year and $265,000 annually thereafter, but that Pitt will recoup more than that much money in reduced health insurance costs, improved employee productivity and reduced absenteeism.

The following case histories came from interviews with two Pitt medical center employees and the EAP counselors who worked with them. The clients' names have been changed at their request.

DARLENE

After her eight-year marriage ended in divorce, Darlene and her two young children moved from Maine back to her parents' house in Pittsburgh. No one was happy with that setup, least of all Darlene's ex-husband. He was phoning her at work, alternately pleading for a reconciliation and then cursing Darlene when she wouldn't agree.

"It was getting to the point that, for the first time, my personal life was interfering with my ability to do my job," said Darlene, a staff member at Presbyterian University Hospital. "That was probably the major reason I came here (to EAP) — that and the fact that the program was free. For a single parent like me, that's a big plus." One of the first steps when a new client comes to EAP is matching him or her with an appropriate counselor, said program director Carolyn Maue. Clients are asked if they would prefer to meet with a man or woman counselor, a white or African-American one, or a counselor specializing in a particular issue.

Darlene was matched with counselor Nancy Mallon, who specializes in stress management and women's issues. Like EAP's other full-time counselors, Mallon also is trained to work with clients who have drug and alcohol problems. "At first, Nancy mainly just did a lot of listening to me," Darlene recalled. "She let me cry, she let me yell and act stupid. Sometimes, that's what you need, an unbiased person to bounce ideas off. I figured that my friends would probably just tell me what I wanted to hear." Mallon wasn't doing all of that listening out of the goodness of her heart. EAP counselors often let clients do nearly all of the talking during the first session or two. "That way," Mallon said, "we can assess the client's needs and decide whether we'll be seeing the client ourselves or referring them to some outside program that might be better able to help them. I don't want a client to become bonded to me and then end up referring them to an outside counselor." In cases where a client's problems are too severe or specialized for EAP's short-term counseling, EAP staff will work with the client to find outside help that is covered by the client's health insurance. If the client wishes, EAP will check in occasionally with the outside agency to monitor the client's progress.

Darlene and counselor Mallon met weekly — and later, once every two weeks — for six months working through Darlene's divorce-related trauma. But Mallon sensed that Darlene's problems went beyond the immediate ones of the breakup. Basically, she had a rotten self-image.

"I guess I pretty much felt worthless, ugly, fat, you name it," Darlene recalled. "Part of that probably came from hearing my ex-husband tell me for years that I was all of those things. But part of it was coming from me, too." Mallon referred Darlene to a women's support group that discussed problem-ridden relationships. "The group helped me see that I was not this sore thumb in the world, that other people had been through the kind of marriage I'd been in," Darlene said.

Mallon said that in her own sessions with Darlene, she tried to emphasize her client's strengths. "By getting in touch with the things she did well, like her job, she (Darlene) could use that as a foundation on which to build her self-esteem," Mallon said.

Darlene: "I felt like I was nothing. Nancy helped me realize I was something. She didn't actually do that for me, I did. But she pointed me in the right direction." Darlene admitted that she initially came to EAP expecting some counselor to magically make her feel better. "But that's not what Nancy did!" Darlene said, laughing. "She sent me home with all of these worksheets for doing a self-inventory of my personality. It was a lot of work, but it was real helpful." At first, Darlene was surprised that Mallon, whom she came to think of as a personal friend, would not acknowledge her during chance meetings on Oakland streets.

"You wouldn't even say 'hello' to me," Darlene said, mock-accusingly, during a recent visit to Mallon's office.

Mallon laughed. "That's because you were with other people," she said. "If you'd been alone, I would have said 'hello' to you." To avoid betraying clients' confidentiality, EAP counselors tend not to speak in public to a client unless the client makes the first move, Mallon explained.

Until last week, Darlene had not visited Mallon's office since her last counseling session a year ago. Since then, Darlene has lost 75 lbs. and has continued to rebuild a self-confidence that she thought she'd lost forever. "Today, I feel like the person I was before I got married," she said.

Besides wanting to see Mallon before the counselor begins a maternity leave in November, Darlene had another reason for visiting Mallon's office. She plans to get married again — this time, to a man she described as being far more positive and supportive than her ex-husband — and she wanted to show off her engagement ring.

— Bruce Steele

VICKY

As an administrator in Pitt's medical center, Vicky referred several people she supervised to EAP. She never thought she would use the program herself.

But then the demands of Vicky's job began spiraling out of control. She was working more and more hours, coming in on Saturdays, and still couldn't keep up with her workload. Changes in America's health care system and within the medical center itself were multiplying at a bewildering rate.

"I was blaming myself, telling myself that I should be able to do more," Vicky remembered. "Physically, I was exhausted and I wasn't taking care of myself. The worst part was the frustration I felt. I let it reach the point where I had to admit, 'I can't handle this anymore. I can't do my job the way it should be done.' I was thinking of resigning."

Instead, Vicky went to EAP and began meeting with counselor Mark Hassell. "I paced through most of the first session, I was so wound up and frustrated," she said. "I was so fatigued, yet I couldn't sit down. It took two or three sessions before I could get to the point of talking about how I could do something positive about my job."

Hassell recalled: "Her managing skills were excellent but she needed to learn to say 'no.' That word wasn't part of her vocabulary."

Vicky: "Some of the extra work, I had taken on myself. It wasn't always a question of having more and more work dumped on me. Mark helped me to step back, to look at where I was overwhelmed and separate out what were the unreasonable demands." Hassell: "I tried to help her to see her job in relation to the rest of her life. She needed to realign her priorities more toward herself and less toward the organization."

Vicky: "Mark gave me a packet of materials on stress. I read every word."

Hassell: "A lot of it is learning to recognize what's within your control and what isn't. It's like when you're sitting in traffic. There's nothing you can do about it, so you might as well try to relax and not let it get to you. It's like that in the workplace, too."

Vicky: "Mark told me, 'You need to remember to take care of yourself.' I had always tried to do some kind of exercise, but now I'm bicycling and playing racquetball regularly."

Hassell: "Stress is getting to be a bigger problem all the time, and we're counseling more people here who have stress-related problems. People are taking on more work, both at the managerial and the staff levels. Health care is one area where things are changing rapidly, but most other businesses are also going through a lot of changes. One thing I tell my clients is that it's only natural that job duties will change. It's scary, but by the year 2004, 1994 will probably look like the good old days."

As Vicky began putting less pressure on herself and delegating more work to others, she found that she had greater patience with the people she was supervising and was accomplishing more herself. "If you feel good about what you do, you can get a lot more done," she said. "I'm not spending so much time anymore dealing with it (the job), I'm doing it.

"Before I started coming in for counseling, I had to talk myself into coming to work every day. Sometimes, I would feel like turning my car around and going home. I don't do that anymore. I'm getting satisfaction out of my job again."

— Bruce Steele