Why traditional mental health resources miss the people who need them the most
Here is a number that should bother you: only 4 to 6% of people who have access to an wellness programs will ever use them.
That means if you have 100 employees, six of them might pick up the phone. The other roughly 94 either don’t know the program exists, don’t trust it’s confidential, are too embarrassed to use it, or — and this is the most common reason — need help at 11pm on a Tuesday and the program only operates Monday through Friday, 9 to 5.
84% of employees faced at least one mental health challenge in the past year including stress, burnout, or lower motivation (2025 data).
“When you’re at a job site a lot of the time you are by yourself." Scott Martin, construction industry veteran and suicide attempt survivor.
The other problem is trust. A lot of people especially in blue-collar industries, in healthcare, in front-line service work, have been taught their whole careers that asking for help is a sign of weakness. They’re not going to call a hotline. They’re not going to fill out a wellness survey. But they might talk to someone who gets it. Someone who’s been through something similar. Someone who isn’t taking notes or filing a report.
That’s the idea behind PeerSupport. Not clinical. Not bureaucratic. Just a real human being on the other side of a screen, ready to listen.
What the Research Actually Says
The data on peer support isn’t theoretical anymore. When people receive support from someone with lived experience, someone who has walked through the same kind of darkness they’re more likely to keep talking. More likely to take the next step. More likely to still be here next week.
PeerSupport models have been shown to reduce emergency room visits, reduce hospitalizations, and increase treatment engagement. They work particularly well in communities where stigma is high and trust in traditional healthcare is low which is a description of nearly every sector we work with.
2X – Employees who feel their mental health is supported are twice as likely to report no burnout or depression. (Mind Share Partners, 2025)
The good news and the frustrating news are the same: we know what helps. The problem has never been a lack of knowledge. It’s been a lack of access.
That’s what Healthtek PeerSupport is designed to fix.
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