Characteristics of health counselling in the workplace via e-mail

This study was conducted to examine how health counselling via electronic mail (e-mail health counselling) was used in the workplace. The definition of health counselling employed in this study was 'any assistance to an individual seeking to solve any health problem'. A total of 2119 health counsellings conducted at a Japanese company's head office (700 employees) in 1997 and 1998 was used for the analysis, which compared four health counselling methods: e-mail, face-to-face, telephone and ordinary mail. This study distinguished four main characteristics of e-mail health counselling. First, the most and second most frequently used counselling methods were face-to-face and telephone counselling, at 70 and 15%, respectively, with e-mail health counselling ranked third at 13%. e-mail counselling was the second most frequently used method for employees in their 20s and 30s, while it ranked third among those over 40. Only 6% of employees in their 50s used e-mail counselling. Secondly, the proportion of mental health issues treated via e-mail counselling was significantly higher, at 26%, than for other counselling methods, which was at or below 10% for each of the other methods. Thirty-two per cent of all mental health counselling was conducted via e-mail. Thirdly, compared with face-to-face counselling, e-mail counselling dealt with more health issues related to primary prevention than with those related to secondary or tertiary prevention. Fourthly, compared with face-to-face counselling, e-mail counselling dealt more with health issues of third parties. These results suggest that e-mail health counselling may be useful in reaching people other than those targeted by the remaining counselling methods.