Occupational Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)

Employee Assistance Programs can be traced back to the late 1930s as a response by the business community in dealing with occupational alcoholism. During the early 1900’s problems with alcohol impaired worker grew dramatically and drinking on the job became a social norm. These issues ranged from significant injuries or death to simple loss of production or productivity. This became a major problem for industrial industry that was seeing a major boom in production at this time. Therefore, alcoholism became the main focuses for these businesses and job-based alcoholism programs became prevalent. By 1939, the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) movement had begun to spread throughout the Midwestern and Northeastern United States. People in “recovery" began to eagerly share their experiences with other workers and the “work rescue” movement began (Trice and Schonbrunn, 1981). Later, formalized programs were developed with a desire to reach a larger number of employees. Led by the Yale Center of Alcohol Studies, a nine step plan for implementing an occupational alcoholism program: 1) education of top management, 2) assignment of program responsibility to an existing department, preferably the medical department, 3) selection and training of a coordinator to administer the program, 4) mobilization of internal intervention resources, 5) development of a company-wide policy

regarding relationship of treatment to discipline, 6) linkage to alcoholism treatment services, 7) supervisory training, 8) employee orientation and education, and 9) periodic surveys to assess the extent of the problem within the company (Henderson and Bacon, 1953). This would be the start of the EAP movement.
These types of programs would remain intact until the tremendous growth in EAPs began in the early 1970s.

President Nixon signed the Comprehensive Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Prevention, Treatment, and Rehabilitation Act of 1970 on December 31, 1970 which was also known as the Hughes Act, for Senator Harold Hughes. Hughes was a recovering alcoholic who championed the cause of alcoholism research who establish a Senate Special Sub-committee on Alcoholism and Narcotics. This committee was brought forth to create a comprehensive Federal program to address prevention and treatment of alcohol abuse and

alcoholism.
During this same time period, The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAA) was established as a component of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). It then became a separate institute alongside NIMH and the National Institute on Drug Abuse under the Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration.
In 1972, the Occupational Programs Office of the Federal Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (FIAA) offered federal grants to help increase the number of EAPs offered. The NIAA and FIAA combined with the private and federal programs established three Hundred new EAPS in the first year of NIAA. By 1979, 59% of Fortune 500 companies had established formal employee assistance programs and estimates of the number of American companies with formal EAPs at the end of the 1970s ranged from 2500 to 4,000 (Roman, 1981).
In the 1980’s and 1990’s the numbers of private EAP programs continued to expand. During this time of growth, the EAPs transformed from alcoholism prevention and treatment based programs toward a true employee health program. These improvements included mental health counseling, family counseling, legal advising, crisis intervention and general overview of wealth management.
In 1999, Council of Accreditation (COA), in conjunction with the United States Government, created accreditation standards for internal and external EAPs. The COA thought it to be essential for there to be a somewhat standardized set of practices and standardized guidelines for professional EAPs. To this date, there have been 8 revisions to the guidelines which have to be met to become an accredited EAP.