Ambika Fraser, head of proposition at Unum UK, comments: "Mental health has always been a big issue but often ignored because of the perceived stigma."
Table: Types of common mental ill-health
Source: Canada Life
While she agrees more work has been done recently to shed light on the high costs for businesses that do not properly protect the mental health of employees, there is still more ground to cover.
Ms Fraser adds: "The business case is clear for return on investment into mental health support, and how this can translate into happy, healthy and productive workers.
"But employers still struggle with how to manage this proactively instead of reactively. This is where partnering with a provider who specialises in mental health can make a difference."
So there needs to be a greater, more concerted effort to help those who are suffering from mental illness, and to encourage the use of employee support programmes and other measures to promote wellbeing.
Duty of insurers
As far as Ms Borolanu-Omura is concerned, insurers have already taken great strides to "helping employers to improve the mental health of their workforce through preventative support and early intervention services.
"The industry wants to do more, and we are keen to see more employees have access to this kind of provision."
There have been signs that insurance providers are doing more to help pay out on mental ill health claims.
Data from the Association of British Insurers (ABI) and Group Risk Development (Grid) reveals for individual income protection and individual critical illness cover, mental ill health claims are being paid out.
Figure 1: Individual income protection claims payout
Source: ABI/Grid
According to Scott Cadger, head of underwriting and claims strategy at Scottish Widows: "We all have mental health, just as we have our physical health, and companies are now beginning to deal with it in the same way."
Duty of employers
Ms Borolanu-Omura believes far more needs to be done not just to encourage employers to provide insurance cover and associated benefits, but also to increase employee take-up.
She says: "As the [Stevenson-Farmer] report points out, employer action on mental ill health is intrinsically measureable.
"We want to see employers provide their staff with an annual protection statement outlining their current entitlements to sick pay and state benefits to help them better understand their financial resilience if absent due to mental ill health."
Axa PPP Healthcare's Ms Mohns highlights the fact that protecting employee's mental health is "part of an employer's duty of care.
