{"id":76,"date":"2019-06-10T11:11:57","date_gmt":"2019-06-10T15:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.debousquet.com\/blog\/?p=76"},"modified":"2022-03-10T15:09:18","modified_gmt":"2022-03-10T20:09:18","slug":"making-a-wsib-workers-compensation-claim-for-chronic-mental-stress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debousquet.com\/blog\/2019\/06\/10\/making-a-wsib-workers-compensation-claim-for-chronic-mental-stress\/","title":{"rendered":"Making a WSIB Worker\u2019s Compensation Claim for Chronic Mental Stress"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As of January 1, 2018, claims for work-related chronic mental stress have been recognized in workplace<br \/>\ncompensation cases in Ontario. The vast majority of these chronic mental stress claims however have<br \/>\nbeen unsuccessful given the difficult criteria required to prove these claims.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.debousquet.com\">Employment lawyers in Toronto<\/a> state that a worker is generally entitled to benefits for chronic mental stress \u201cif an appropriately diagnosed mental stress injury is caused by a substantial work-related stressor.\u201d In addition, the WSIB decision-maker must be able to identify what has happened to cause chronic mental stress, including gathering information<br \/>\nfrom co-workers and supervisory staff. This process represents a significant barrier to gathering crucial<br \/>\nevidence for the claim given that chronic mental stress is often caused by co-workers and supervisory<br \/>\nstaff who would likely refuse to confirm the existence of information required to proceed with a claim.<\/p>\n<p>Further, workers must prove that their workplace was the \u201cpredominant cause\u201d of chronic mental<br \/>\nstress. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsib.ca\/en\/operational-policy-manual\/chronic-mental-stress\">WSIB Policy 15-03-14<\/a> defines predominant cause as \u201cthe primary or main cause of the mental<br \/>\nstress injury \u2013 as compared to all of the other individual stressors\u201d. Using the predominant cause test is<br \/>\na very high standard that is also used in many other Provincial jurisdiction\u2019s workplace compensation<br \/>\nboards such as British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Quebec. By comparison, workers submitting<br \/>\nclaims for physical injuries only have to show their workplace was a contributing factor to the injury.<\/p>\n<p>The difficulty in proving chronic mental stress has identified a significant gap between the treatment of<br \/>\nphysical injuries versus mental injuries. Mental injuries are still viewed as more subjective and suspect<br \/>\nthan physical ones, often to the detriment of workers trying to advance a claim for chronic mental<br \/>\nstress. It is not surprising then that the WSIB has rejected the vast majority of claims related to work-<br \/>\nrelated chronic mental stress in Ontario, although the number of claims submitted remains low.<br \/>\nWhether the low number of claims points to a lack of education regarding these legislative changes or a<br \/>\nfeeling amongst workers that chronic mental stress claims are likely to fail remains to be seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As of January 1, 2018, claims for work-related chronic mental stress have been recognized in workplace compensation cases in Ontario. The vast majority of these chronic mental stress claims however have been unsuccessful given the difficult criteria required to prove these claims. Employment lawyers in Toronto state that a worker is generally entitled to benefits for chronic mental stress \u201cif an appropriately diagnosed mental stress injury is caused by a substantial work-related stressor.\u201d In addition, the WSIB decision-maker must be able to identify what has happened to cause chronic mental stress, including gathering information from co-workers and supervisory staff. This&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[4,3],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debousquet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debousquet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debousquet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debousquet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debousquet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.debousquet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":719,"href":"https:\/\/www.debousquet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions\/719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debousquet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debousquet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debousquet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}