Bear Stearns Calls in Grief Counselors

March 19, 2008 — -- Facing the loss of their life savings and very possibly their jobs, employees at investment bank Bear Stearns are turning to trained professionals -- not for financial advice but for psychological counseling.

The company, which collapsed suddenly last week when real estate clients withdrew $17 billion in two days, will provide psychological counselors, called employee assistance professionals, to help workers handle the news that their plans and perhaps their dreams have abruptly and dramatically changed.

"Employee assistance professionals are behavioral experts in the workplace. Anything that effects human behavior or emotions at work are the areas where we focus. We're not looking at the financial realities of a situation, but the emotional impact of that situation," said John Maynard, CEO of the Employee Assistance Professionals Association, the largest such organization in the country with 4,000 members.

Spokespeople for the bank would not comment on how many counselors would be hired to meet with the company's 14,000 employees, but said both internal and outside help would be used.

Many of the company's employees could lose their jobs and all of them have seen the value of their stock holdings and options evaporate overnight.

An average Bear Stearns employee who had $200,000 in a retirement fund last week now has just $2,000.

Employee assistance professionals, who compare their work to grief counseling, told ABC News that the sudden shock of learning that you have lost your life savings or job is akin to the emotional jolt felt when learning you have a terminal disease.

Symptoms of dealing with the trauma can include anxiety, depression, irritability, withdrawal, loss of appetite and sleeplessness.

"I have participated in mergers in [the] past and I've witnessed a reaction very similar to that found in people grieving the loss of a loved one," said Dan Hughes, a psychologist and director of the employee assistance program at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.