Houston-based Weingarten Realty Investors, with 350 employees located in 21 states, is one of the largest equity real estate investment trusts on the New York Stock Exchange. It is also a mental health friendly business.

Stanford Alexander, Chairman of Weingarten Realty Investors, explains why. “Mental health issues touch everyone. They have touched our family, our friends and our employees. One in five experience mental illness. From a personal perspective and from a business perspective, if you’re going to be fair to yourself, your family, and your company, you must get help.”

Founded in 1948, and restructured as a real estate investment trust in 1985, Weingarten Realty Investors has grown into a $6 billion enterprise. However, its most valuable asset, according to Alexander, is its employees. “People spend so much of their total day at work,” Alexander says. “If they are not in a place where they feel people care, they don’t have as good an attitude.”

Alexander believes there are two reasons businesses fail to appropriately address the challenges of mental illness in the workplace. “Stigma is a problem,” Alexander says. “People are afraid of the stigma of mental illness. It is similar to the stigma surrounding AIDS, and the stigma that used to surround cancer.”

“The second problem,” says Alexander, “Is that businesses have been misinformed by insurance companies that claim mental health parity benefits will cost too much money. It’s just not true. Businesses will experience somewhere between a 0.5% to a 1.5% cost increase, but this is offset by a much bigger productivity improvement. As an employer who values highly productive employees, we want them to get help if they need it.”

As an employer Weingarten Realty Investors is committed to parity for mental illness in its health benefits package. “It is imperative to have parity,” says Alexander. “ Employers should treat mental illness the same as they treat other illnesses, like tuberculosis and cancer.”

Weingarten Realty Investors also gives employees time to deal with mental illnesses in their families, just as they would other serious illnesses. Their Employee Assistance Program provides free mental health screenings and assessments. They supplement these programs and policies with health fairs, brown-bag seminars, and an employee wellness program.

“We have a good program that helps us recruit and retain good employees,” says Alexander. “But the challenge remains. We have to work together to stamp out stigma.”