Defense contractor mental health, built for a cleared workforce.
Readiness and retention in a cleared workforce rest on people who will not raise a hand. CEREVITY gives defense firms a confidential, private-pay therapy benefit that sits outside the company: no insurance claim is filed, no diagnosis code is created for one, and the firm is never told who used it.
Defense contractor mental health at CEREVITY is a firm-sponsored, private-pay therapy benefit for cleared employees. Care sits outside the company: no insurance claim is filed, no diagnosis code is created for one, and the firm receives no report on who attends. Telehealth in all 50 states, in 50-minute, 90-minute and 3-hour sessions, with every match made by clinical review.
What defense contractor mental health means here.
A nationwide network of independent licensed clinicians, offered to a cleared workforce as a benefit the firm funds and does not see.
CEREVITY is a nationwide network of independent licensed clinicians providing private-pay therapy by secure telehealth across all 50 states. It is not an app, not a coaching marketplace, and not an employee assistance program. In a defense contractor mental health arrangement, each eligible employee is matched by hand to a clinician experienced with high-responsibility work, and then keeps that clinician.
For a firm, the structure is simple to reason about. Care is private pay with no insurance claim filed, so nothing routes through the company health plan and no claim record is created. The benefit sits alongside whatever the firm already offers rather than replacing it, and it is scoped to the population the firm most needs to keep. The point is not coverage. The point is a channel people will actually use.
Clinicians are independent professionals holding their own state licenses, at doctoral and masters level, matched rather than assigned by rota. CEREVITY co-founder Martha Fernandez, LCSW is a licensed clinical social worker whose work covers psychotherapy for executives, entrepreneurs and healthcare professionals, and trauma-informed care, drawing on CBT, EMDR, somatic-informed and psychodynamic approaches. An employee who wants a particular modality can say so at intake and can be rematched.
Why the benefit you already have does not reach these people.
The obstacle is not access, and it is not price. It is what an employee believes engaging will create.
A cleared workforce is unusually expensive to replace and unusually quiet. The engineers, analysts and program leads a defense firm most depends on are trained in discretion, rewarded for composure, and surrounded by colleagues who read hesitation as risk. Whatever the firm offers internally arrives inside that culture and is judged by it.
The concern that engaging with care could touch a clearance is not folklore, and it has been measured in an adjacent population.
of surveyed active-component service members agreed or strongly agreed that the effect on a security clearance might affect their decision to seek mental health treatment. Concern about harm to career ran to 57.4 percent in the same survey. Source: Wong et al., Perceptions of Mental Health Confidentiality Policies and Practices in the U.S. Military, RAND Health Quarterly, 2025; 12(2):11. Survey of 1,873 active-component service members. A military population, not a contractor workforce.
Read that finding narrowly, because it deserves to be. It measures service members, not your employees, and this page does not stretch it past its population. What it does establish is that the worry is documented and strong enough to change what people do. In the same survey, more than 40 percent said they would seek treatment outside the military health system altogether, which is the behavior a firm should plan around.
Source · Wong et al., Perceptions of Mental Health Confidentiality Policies and Practices in the U.S. Military, RAND Health Quarterly, 2025; 12(2):11. Survey of 1,873 active-component service members.
CEREVITY takes no position on the clearance process and offers none here. What a firm can act on is the structural point: a benefit administered through the company is evaluated by the employee as something the company can see. That is also why generic employee assistance programs, built for high-volume short-term support, reach this population poorly, an argument set out in our note on why senior people do not use your EAP.
The alternative is not a better internal program. It is a channel that is structurally outside the firm, paid for by the firm and invisible to it, which is the distinction drawn in our honest comparison of EAP and private therapy. Utilization, not coverage, is the only number that tells you whether it worked.
What people actually bring to the work.
The presenting issues behind the performance, in the language of the job rather than the brochure.
Program pressure
Milestones, cost accounts and review gates that do not move. Sustained performance pressure of this kind is what high-stakes anxiety therapy is built for, and it degrades judgment well before anyone names it.
The habit of not saying
Discretion is a professional virtue that does not switch off at the end of the day. People who spend years being careful about what they share often lose the reflex to say anything is wrong at all, including to a spouse or a physician.
Isolation in the seat
A program lead has no peer inside the program and a chain of command that evaluates rather than confides. That is the exact pattern leadership isolation therapy exists to address.
Sleep and vigilance
The mind that will not stand down. Chronic alertness erodes the recovery that judgment depends on, and it is often the first thing people mention when they finally talk about not sleeping because of work.
Burnout in senior staff
The most experienced people absorb the most and complain the least. Their decline is slow, legible late, and expensive, which is why executive burnout therapy treats the pattern rather than the week.
Anxiety and low mood
The ordinary conditions, arriving in people who consider themselves the reliable ones. Anxiety and depression therapy is the unglamorous centre of what this benefit is used for, and that is as it should be.
Strain at home
Travel, long hours and a job that follows people home all land on a household. Partners carry the overflow, and couples therapy is part of the network for that reason.
Decision load
Hundreds of small calls a day, each with a consequence attached. The quality of the last one is never the quality of the first, which is the problem decision fatigue therapy works on directly.
A benefit your people will not touch is not a benefit. It is a line item that makes the problem look handled.
Session formats built for a program calendar.
Three lengths, and no obligation to hold the same slot every week.
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. Someone travelling to a customer site for three weeks can do concentrated work in a single longer block rather than break a standing weekly appointment, and individual therapy continues with the same clinician throughout. Matching is usually completed the same day the intake arrives, and modality is chosen with the employee rather than assigned to them.
Give your cleared workforce a channel the firm cannot see.
A confidential conversation about a firm-level partnership takes one call. Nothing about it touches your health plan, and nothing about it asks an employee to explain themselves to the company.
Start a partnership conversationHow a cleared employee is matched.
Every eligible employee is matched by hand after clinical review, not routed by an algorithm reading a 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 cleared employee, 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 cleared defense contractors.
An evaluation framework on the dimensions that matter when a firm scopes a benefit for people who are hard to replace. All three models have a place; they were built for different populations.
| 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 cleared employees |
| 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 |
| Firm 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 | cleared defense contractors, end to end |
If this is going through a formal evaluation, our notes on what to look for in a private therapy provider cover the procurement questions in the order buyers usually ask them.
What the firm sees, and what it does not.
A cleared workforce judges a benefit by what it puts on a record somewhere. So the useful thing CEREVITY can tell a firm is exactly what it generates, exactly what it does not, and where every other question belongs.
- 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 cleared employee's clinical content.
- Whether a specific named cleared employee 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.
What CEREVITY generates is narrow and can be stated plainly. Care is private pay, so no insurance claim is filed, no diagnosis code is created for one, and no entry lands in a carrier database. The firm receives administrative confirmation and invoicing and is never given a name attached to clinical content, which is the standard described on our page about therapy that leaves no record an employer sees. The clinical record itself is held by the treating clinician under HIPAA and the confidentiality obligations of their license, together with legal privilege that is strong but not absolute.
What CEREVITY does not do is equally exact, and it matters more on this page than on any other. CEREVITY does not advise anyone on the clearance process, does not interpret any form, guideline or request, and offers no view on what any agency or reviewer does with an answer. Those questions belong with your facility security officer and with the employee's own counsel, and for an individual the honest answer is always the same: ask the people whose job that is. Employees looking for care in their own name can start at our page for individual clearance holders, which is written for individuals rather than for firms.
What the first 30 days look like.
The hardest part of a cleared-workforce partnership is not the contract. It is the period between signature and the first cleared employee 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, cleared-workforce 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 firm.
Retention, sustained performance and recruiting are the levers, and a defense contractor mental health benefit is bought for the first of them more often than for the third.
Retention of hard-to-replace people
Gallup reports that employees who very often or always feel burned out are 74 percent more likely to be looking for another job. In a cleared workforce the people you can least afford to lose are also the least likely to say anything is wrong, so a channel they will genuinely use functions as retention infrastructure rather than as a wellness gesture. The same logic runs through our note on retaining high-value employees.
Sustained performance
Gallup also reports that employees who very often or always experience burnout are 63 percent more likely to take a sick day and 13 percent less confident in their own performance. Those are self-reports of strain rather than outcomes of any treatment, and they are the drag a program manager sees as slipped dates. Buyers usually frame the arithmetic the way our summary of the ROI of wellness programs sets it out.
Recruiting and signal
Gallup estimates that replacing a technical professional costs about 80 percent of their salary and replacing a leader or manager about 200 percent. Against an experienced engineer or program lead that arithmetic is not subtle, and the replacement is harder to source than the salary line suggests. Offering the benefit at hire is also a signal, the case our page on employee mental health benefits makes.
Questions security and HR leaders ask first.
Is defense contractor mental health support a replacement for our EAP?
No. CEREVITY sits alongside the EAP rather than replacing it. The EAP continues to serve the broader workforce at high volume, while CEREVITY provides confidential, matched clinical care for the population the firm most needs to retain. The partnership models are described on our partnerships page.
What does the firm see about who uses it?
Administrative confirmation that contracted services were delivered to eligible individuals, invoicing, and eligibility reconciliation. The firm does not see whether a named person scheduled, attended or engaged, what was discussed, which clinician was assigned, or any session note. That boundary is written into the partnership agreement before anything goes live.
Can CEREVITY tell our cleared employees how therapy affects a clearance?
No, and it would be wrong to try. CEREVITY does not advise on the clearance process, does not interpret any form or guideline, and will not offer an opinion about an individual's situation. What CEREVITY can state is what it generates: no insurance claim, no diagnosis code created for one, no carrier database entry, and no report to the firm about who attends. Everything past that belongs with your facility security officer and with the employee's own counsel.
Is CEREVITY cleared, accredited or endorsed by a government agency?
No. CEREVITY is a commercial private-pay clinical network. It holds no government contract, no agency accreditation and no agency relationship, and nothing on this page should be read as an agency position or as guidance from one. The arrangement is commercial, between CEREVITY and your firm, on terms set out in the partnership agreement.
How is a cleared workforce mental health benefit paid for?
The firm sponsors it under a partnership agreement, at standard rates, with the scope of covered individuals agreed in advance. No claim is filed with any carrier at any point. Standard individual rates are published on our pricing page so a buyer can see the underlying numbers before scoping.
Who is eligible, and who decides?
The firm defines eligibility in the agreement. Most start with a named population, commonly senior technical staff and program leadership, and widen it later. CEREVITY confirms eligibility at intake, and nothing about the clinical work flows back to the list.
Can you cover employees across multiple sites and states?
Yes. Care is delivered by secure telehealth across all 50 states, so one partnership covers a workforce wherever it sits, including people who spend long stretches at a customer location. Employees can begin through get started once the firm has scoped the benefit.
How do we begin?
Use the briefing form on this page, or reach the partnerships desk through the contact page. A member of CEREVITY's clinical leadership follows up directly and confidentially to scope eligibility, reporting boundaries and the internal communications your people will actually read.
Start a partnership conversation.
Tell us about the workforce you want to cover. A member of CEREVITY's clinical leadership will follow up directly, and the HR and people leaders we work with usually want the reporting boundary settled first.
Further reading and related partnerships.
Research, buyer-side material, clinical writing, and the adjacent audiences CEREVITY supports.
Research and reports
For firms and HR
Clinical writing
A note on sources.
The figure and the clearance-concern number on this page come from Wong et al., Perceptions of Mental Health Confidentiality Policies and Practices in the U.S. Military, RAND Health Quarterly, 2025; 12(2):11, a survey of 1,873 active-component service members. That population is military rather than contractor, and nothing here extends the finding past it. The workforce and replacement-cost figures are from Gallup research on employee burnout, accessed September 2026. Every number on this page is a report of what people say about their own behavior or a published cost estimate, not evidence about the effect of any treatment. CEREVITY publishes no view on the security clearance process, and questions about it belong with a facility security officer and with counsel. The structural comparison is based on the firsthand experience of CEREVITY clinicians who have served on EAP panels combined with publicly available vendor materials. Contractual scopes, including any Business Associate Agreement, are confirmed in writing before a partnership goes live. Further CEREVITY research is collected in the knowledge base.