A corporate mental health program senior teams actually use.
Most corporate mental health programs are designed for volume, and they are evaluated on enrollment rather than on whether the people carrying the most organizational risk ever engage. CEREVITY supplies the clinical half of a program built for executives and key talent: confidential, private-pay therapy with senior independent clinicians, nationwide.
Corporate mental health programs work in two halves. The employer owns job design: workload, schedules, staffing and management practice. A clinical partner owns care. CEREVITY supplies the clinical half for senior teams, confidential private-pay therapy with experienced independent clinicians by secure telehealth in all 50 states, with no claim record and nothing reported back to the employer.
What CEREVITY is, and what it is not.
A nationwide network of independent licensed clinicians, offered as a confidential benefit for the people at the top of the organization.
CEREVITY is a nationwide network of independent licensed clinicians providing private-pay therapy by secure telehealth in all 50 states. It is not an app, not a coaching marketplace, and not an employee assistance program. Each leader is matched by hand to a clinician experienced with high-responsibility roles, and then keeps that clinician over time rather than restarting with whoever is available.
For the employer the model is simple to reason about. Care is private pay with no claim filed, so nothing routes through the company health plan and no claim record is created. The benefit sits above whatever already exists for the broader workforce rather than replacing it, and it is scoped deliberately narrowly so that it stays a leadership-tier resource.
It is worth being precise about the boundary. CEREVITY does not run your corporate wellness program, does not audit your workload policy, and does not write your management training. Those are the employer's half of the work, and the evidence says they matter at least as much as anything a clinician does. What CEREVITY provides is the part most employers cannot staff internally: senior clinical care that a chief executive will actually accept.Why most corporate mental health programs miss senior teams.
The population is small, the exposure risk is high, and the standard channel was designed for neither.
A senior leader is being evaluated continuously by people who can remove them. That single fact reshapes help-seeking. Routing a request for care through an internal channel, a manager, or a company-branded portal creates a record and a rumor risk that a junior employee does not carry in the same way, which is one reason benefits designed for the whole workforce rarely reach the executive tier.
The evidence on what employers actually buy is less flattering than the vendor decks suggest.
workers across 233 organizations were surveyed, and participants in individual-level wellbeing programs, including mindfulness, resilience training, relaxation classes and wellbeing apps, appeared no better off than colleagues who did not take part. Source: Fleming, W. J. (2024). Employee well-being outcomes from individual-level mental health interventions: cross-sectional evidence from the United Kingdom. Industrial Relations Journal.
That study measured individual-level offerings: mindfulness, resilience and stress management courses, relaxation classes and wellbeing apps. It did not measure therapy with a licensed clinician, and it is not evidence that clinical care does not work. It is evidence that a light-touch program layered on top of an unchanged job does very little, which is a different and more useful finding. The same distinction runs through an honest comparison of an EAP with private therapy: short-term brokered sessions and open-ended clinical care are not the same product.
The World Health Organization reached a compatible conclusion in its 2022 guidelines on mental health at work. Of its thirteen recommendations, the strongest evidence sits behind manager training, rated a strong recommendation on moderate-certainty evidence. Organizational interventions that address psychosocial risk factors, meaning workload, schedules and communication, are recommended conditionally on very low-certainty evidence, and universal individual stress-management interventions are recommended conditionally on low-certainty evidence. No recommendation was made either way on screening programs. Read plainly: nothing in this field has strong effect sizes, the organizational half is where the leverage is, and a program that is only individual-level is arguing from the weakest part of the evidence base. That is also why executives do not use the EAP, separately from anything the evidence says about efficacy.
Sources · World Health Organization, Mental health at work fact sheet, 2024
Brooks and Ling, Journal of Insurance Regulation 39(8), 2020, citing Amaral (2007)
What senior leaders actually bring to the work.
The presenting issues behind the performance, in the language of the role.
Sustained overload
Not a bad quarter but a role that has run hot for years without a recovery window. This is the pattern executive burnout therapy is built to catch, and it degrades judgment long before it produces a resignation.
Decision load
Dozens of consequential calls a day, most of them made on incomplete information. Chronic decision fatigue shows up as avoidance, delay, and a slow drift toward whichever option requires the least argument.
No peer inside the building
Direct reports are managed, the board evaluates, and the spouse has heard it already. Senior leaders absorb the hardest calls alone, which is the specific pattern leadership isolation therapy addresses.
Anxiety and low mood
The clinical presentations underneath most of what gets labeled burnout. Anxiety and depression in a high-functioning leader are frequently invisible to everyone at work, including the leader, until something breaks.
High-stakes exposure
Earnings calls, board presentations, restructurings, litigation, and the moments where a career turns on a single conversation. High-stakes anxiety therapy treats the physiology of that exposure rather than coaching the presentation.
Self-doubt at the top
Seniority does not resolve the question of whether you belong in the seat; it raises the cost of asking it out loud. Imposter syndrome therapy is one of the most common reasons senior clients present.
Presenteeism
The leader is in every meeting and contributing very little. This is the expensive failure mode, because it is invisible on an absence report and it compounds across everyone whose work depends on that person's throughput.
Strain at home
The hours and the mental load follow leaders home, and the relationship absorbs the overflow of a role that does not pause. Couples therapy is part of the network for exactly this reason.
You cannot mindfulness your way out of a job that is structurally unsurvivable. Fix the job, and give the people running it somewhere real to take it.
Session formats built for an executive calendar.
Three lengths, no mandatory weekly slot, including 3-hour intensives for leaders whose travel makes a standing appointment fiction.
The steady cadence of ongoing therapy. Most clients spend most of their care in 50-minute sessions.
For work that needs more room than a standard hour can hold. See 90-minute sessions.
For work that needs uninterrupted time to reach resolution. See 3-hour therapy intensives.
Care is delivered in 50-minute, 90-minute, and 3-hour sessions by secure telehealth, nationwide. A leader between board meetings can do concentrated work in a single 90-minute block rather than forcing a weekly cadence that the next travel week will break. Continuity is preserved because the leader keeps the same clinician throughout, and modality is matched at intake rather than assigned by whoever has an opening.
Give senior teams somewhere real to take it.
A confidential conversation about a leadership-tier program takes one call. Nothing about it touches the company health plan.
Start a partnership conversationHow a senior leader is matched.
Every leader is matched by hand from the clinical network, not by an algorithm running against an intake form.
The eligible individual submits a confidential intake form covering presenting issues, modality preference, professional context, and scheduling parameters. Operated by CEREVITY directly, not by a broker.
Intake is reviewed by CEREVITY's clinical leadership against the network's active capacity, current licensure footprint, and modality availability. This is the step that does not exist in an EAP.
A specific clinician is matched to the senior leader, who receives the match with the clinician's profile, modality, and credentials, plus a direct online scheduling link.
Scheduling runs directly through CEREVITY infrastructure with no phone handoff. First sessions are typically scheduled within 5 to 10 business days of the match.
Care continues on the cadence the clinical work requires, in 50-minute, 90-minute, or 3-hour sessions, without an employer-imposed session cap.
Capability comparison for senior teams.
An evaluation framework on the dimensions that matter when scoping a leadership-tier program. All three models have a place, and most organizations should run more than one: the question is which population each is actually for. Buyers comparing EAP alternatives usually find the difference is not features but who will use it.
| Dimension | Typical EAP | Executive-tier platform | CEREVITY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Network model | Broker layer between employer and contractor roster | Single-vendor platform, W-2 or contracted pool | Independent clinical network with direct relationships |
| Clinician assignment | First contractor to reply with availability | Algorithmic matching on intake-form inputs | Clinical review by network leadership |
| Intake and scheduling | Phone handoff to the clinician's line | App-based intake and scheduling | Network-operated intake, direct online scheduling |
| Session formats | Standard 50-minute, capped session counts | Standard 45 to 50-minute sessions | 50-minute, 90-minute, and 3-hour formats, no cap |
| Clinical scope | Acute, broadly applicable concerns | Workforce-wide, executive tier as an upsell | Built around the presenting issues of senior leaders |
| Modality fit | Generalist talk therapy | Generalist therapy with some specialty | CBT, DBT, psychodynamic, IFS, matched at intake |
| Reach | National via roster density | National telehealth, roster variance | All 50 states via telehealth |
| Payment model | Employer-sponsored, in network | Per-employee-per-month seat pricing | Private pay, out of network, partnership agreement |
| Employer visibility | Aggregate, broker-mediated | Vendor dashboards with engagement metrics | Administrative reporting only |
| Right fit for | Workforce-wide acute support | Mid-tier ongoing care with an executive add-on | senior teams, end to end |
If you are running a formal evaluation, our notes on what to look for in a private therapy provider cover the procurement side, including the questions that separate a clinical network from a scheduling layer.
What the employer sees, and what it does not.
A leadership-tier program only functions if the participating leader believes that engaging with it creates no visibility into their care. Everything else is secondary, and what the employer can and cannot see is the first question senior clients ask.
- Confirmation that contracted services were provided to eligible individuals.
- Aggregate utilization at the partnership level, where contractually appropriate.
- Invoicing and eligibility reconciliation.
- Nothing tied to a specific named senior leader's clinical content.
- Whether a specific named senior leader has scheduled, attended, or engaged.
- What clinical issues are being addressed, or which clinician is assigned.
- Session notes, treatment plans, or diagnostic information.
- Any attendance detail at the individual level.
Clinicians are independent licensed professionals operating under their own licensure and the confidentiality and privacy obligations that attach to it. Protected health information is held within the clinical infrastructure, and the agreements governing it are defined in writing before the partnership goes live. Our notice of privacy practices and privacy policy are published in full.
Clinical records, session content, and individual engagement data sit inside the clinical platform. The administrative layer the partner interacts with is structurally separate from the clinical layer.
Eligibility lists are maintained on the partner side and confirmed at the point of intake. Administering eligibility does not require the partner to receive clinical information back.
A Business Associate Agreement is executed where the partnership structure requires it, and whether one applies is a determination made with counsel rather than assumed. The partnership agreement defines the administrative reporting scope in writing before anything goes live. See also our terms of service.
Leaders frequently ask about downstream exposure before they will engage at all. The question that comes up most often is whether therapy shows up on a background check. It is answered directly on our site rather than in a sales conversation.
What the first 30 days look like.
The hardest part of a leadership-tier partnership is not the contract. It is the period between signature and the first senior leader in care.
A 60-minute kickoff with your team and CEREVITY's partnership lead. We confirm the partnership shape, the eligibility model, the administrative reporting scope, and the internal owner. The BAA, where applicable, is executed.
Your team provides the eligible-individual list. CEREVITY confirms it against the network and establishes the verification path at intake. Only eligibility confirmation flows forward.
CEREVITY provides a confidential, leadership-tier comms template explaining the benefit, the privacy posture, and how to access intake. It is written to be received without stigma.
Eligible individuals begin intake on their own cadence. First sessions are typically scheduled within 5 to 10 business days. By day 30 the partnership is operational and a quarterly review cadence is in place.
The business case for the employer.
Retention, sustained performance, and recruiting are the levers. None of them require a claim about curing anything.
Retention of key people
Replacing a senior leader is expensive, slow, and disruptive to everything that person was mid-way through. Confidential clinical care is one of the few interventions that reaches the people least likely to ask for help, which is the core of the retention case for executive mental health.
Sustained performance
Judgment, focus and decision quality degrade under chronic unmanaged stress long before anyone steps back from the role, and the productivity cost of burnout lands mostly as presenteeism rather than absence. Care that addresses the underlying pattern keeps the leadership team operating at the level the plan assumes.
Recruiting and signaling
Offering a real clinical benefit at the top signals that the organization treats its leaders as long-term assets rather than consumable ones. Concierge therapy as a senior benefit is increasingly part of what a senior candidate compares between offers.
What HR and people leaders ask first.
What is a corporate mental health program?
A corporate mental health program is the set of things an employer does to support employee mental health: job design and workload policy, manager training, reasonable accommodations, and access to care. In practice most employee mental health benefits cover only the last of those, and cover it thinly. The World Health Organization's 2022 guidelines treat the organizational half and the care half as separate obligations, and the organizational half is the one employers cannot outsource.
How do you support executive mental health specifically?
By treating senior leaders as a distinct population with distinct exposure risk. Access is private pay with no claim record, matching is done by hand to clinicians experienced with high-responsibility roles, and scheduling is built around an executive calendar. The scope of an executive mental health benefit is set in the partnership agreement, and it is deliberately narrow so that it stays credible as a leadership-tier resource.
Is a corporate mental health program like this confidential?
Yes. Care is private pay, so no claim is filed and nothing routes through the company health plan. Sessions remain between the leader and the licensed clinician, who is bound by their own licensure confidentiality and privacy obligations. The employer receives no clinical information, no attendance list, and no individual-level reporting. Governing agreements, including any Business Associate Agreement, are defined in writing before the program goes live.
Does this replace our EAP?
No, and it should not. An EAP serves the whole workforce at high volume and low cost per head, and it does that job reasonably well for short-term, practical problems. CEREVITY sits above it for a small population that will not use an internal channel. Most organizations keep both, and pair them with broader employee burnout work on the job-design side.
Does the evidence say programs like this actually work?
Be careful with the claim. Large studies of individual-level workplace wellbeing offerings have found little or no measurable effect, and the World Health Organization's own guidelines rate most individual interventions as conditional recommendations on low or very low certainty evidence. What the evidence supports is that job design is the bigger lever and that individual clinical care is a legitimate but modest component. Setting a baseline first helps, which is what benchmarking an executive mental health benefit is for.
What does it cost, and who pays?
Structure is agreed in the partnership conversation and depends on the number of leaders covered and the scope of access. CEREVITY is a private-pay network with transparent fees, so there is no claims accounting to reconcile. Standard individual rates are published on our pricing page, and a sponsored program is billed at those standard rates.
How quickly can a leader be seen?
Once the program is in place, an individual leader is matched by hand to an appropriate clinician, typically on a same-week basis depending on licensure footprint and modality fit. First sessions are usually scheduled within 5 to 10 business days of intake. Matching is reviewed by CEREVITY's clinical leadership rather than assigned algorithmically.
How do we begin?
Start a partnership conversation using the form on this page, by phone at (562) 295-6650, or through the get started page. A member of CEREVITY's clinical leadership will follow up directly and confidentially to scope a program that fits the organization.
Scope a leadership-tier program.
Tell us about the organization and the people you want to cover. A member of CEREVITY's clinical leadership will follow up directly and confidentially.
Further reading and related partnerships.
Research, buyer-side guidance, program design, and the other populations CEREVITY supports.
Research and evidence
For HR and people leaders
Program design
A note on sources.
Guideline positions on this page are taken from the World Health Organization guidelines on mental health at work (2022), including the certainty ratings attached to each of its thirteen recommendations. Prevalence and productivity figures are from the WHO mental health at work fact sheet (2024), which estimates that 15 percent of working-age adults had a mental disorder in 2019 and that 12 billion working days are lost each year to depression and anxiety at a cost of one trillion US dollars in lost productivity. The pull-stat is from Fleming (2024), Industrial Relations Journal. A separate randomized trial reported in JAMA, Song and Baicker (2019), followed roughly 33,000 employees across 160 worksites for 18 months and found more self-reported exercise and weight management but no significant differences in clinical measures, health spending, or employment outcomes. Employee assistance program utilization benchmarks are from Brooks and Ling, Journal of Insurance Regulation, Vol. 39 No. 8 (2020). The structural argument is based on the firsthand experience of CEREVITY clinicians alongside publicly available vendor materials. Specific contractual scopes, including any Business Associate Agreement, are confirmed in writing before a program goes live. Additional CEREVITY research is collected in the knowledge base.