Georgia-based employers study mental health parity and employer leverage at Carter Center

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Adam Nemer, who trains managers to recognize and better support employees’ mental health needs, shares his mental health experiences and normalizes the topic in this flyer from the Carter Center.

Credit: The Carter Center

Adam Nemer was leading a major health care company when his bottled feelings exploded like a dropped Coke can about eight years ago. 

"I was one hot mess," he said. "I couldn't breathe. I couldn't control my emotions. I moved through life like I was running up flights of stairs while breathing through a straw."

Finding his mother dead during a welfare check shook loose 17 years of undiagnosed depression and anxiety, Nemer said.

"When I was 29 and working in my family business with my dad, I found him after he died of suicide," Nemer said. "And the stigma and the shame of mental illness at the time was so strong that I just had a few therapy sessions and I went off into the world."

When Nemer started showing up for work wearing Levi's, T-shirts and flip-flops instead of a suit, his boss noticed. 

"I'm pretty sure if I shaved, I'd miss half my face," Nemer said. "It looked like I was going to the beach, not like I going to run an insurance company. And I was mean as hell to everybody around."

Studies have shown that depression can cause an average productivity dip of 35%, meaning when someone struggles with clinical depression, they lose almost two days of work productivity a week.

Nemer's boss, already aware of Nemer's loss of his mother, had recently learned that Nemer had also found his father's body years earlier, and asked if Nemer was seeing a therapist.

"As I say 'No,' he like pulls out of his pocket the business card of Kaiser's Employee Assistance Program, and slides it across the desk to me," Nemer said.

Now, Nemer trains managers to recognize and better support employees’ mental health needs. Managers who share their mental health experiences and normalize the topic in their companies see improved performance and productivity. 

"When the senior executive opens up and shares their story, it creates the space for everyone else to share theirs," Nemer said. "It breaks that stigma."

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Adam Nemer waves hands in the air onstage at the Carter Center Dec. 8, 2025.

Credit: Contributed

He wrote Simple Mental Health to inspire leaders to become mental health literate and to normalize the topic of mental health in their organizations, and launched the book Dec. 8 at the Mental Health in the Workplace event with Adam Nemer at the Carter Center.

The Mental Health Parity Act of 2022 requires public and private insurers to cover mental health and substance use disorder in the same way as with physical health care. 

But despite the act's passage, many insurers are still not complying with parity laws and many consumers of health care coverage don't know what parity is or how to file a complaint.

For many insurers, it's cheaper to pay fines for violations than it is to provide the coverage that they're mandated to provide, which tells us that there's still a need for more accountability, Sarah Phillips, with the Carter Center, said.

The Mental Health Parity & Business session March 12 at the Carter Center is meant to explain to employers how their purchasing power can influence mental health care for employees.

"It's understanding mental health parity and employer leverage," Phillips said. "So, this will focus on what parity requires, why it matters for employers, and how employer purchasing power can influence plan design and coverage."

This is the first in a series of three round tables designed for representatives of 16 different Georgia-based employers from company executives, CEOs and other C-suite members, to benefits leaders, HR professionals and external affairs staff. 

"We opted for this cohort model because it just allows for more kind of peer learning and building knowledge and capacity over time," she said. "Each session will build on the last rather than treating parity more as a one-off training." 

The next round table session, to be held June, will take a more technical look at reviewing parity compliance, working with brokers and third-party administrators and using that data to identify gaps in coverage, and the November round table discussion is about advocacy for advancing mental health in the workplace. 

Georgia Public Broadcasting is part of the Mental Health Parity Collaborative, a group of newsrooms that are covering challenges and solutions to accessing mental health care in the U.S. The partners on this project include The Carter Center, The Center for Public Integrity, and newsrooms in Arizona, California, Georgia, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Texas.