Issue:
Workers’ Compensation Boards help to assess and treat any injury that an employee has while working at his or her job. Often these are physical injuries, but we know workers can also suffer from mental health conditions from experiencing or witnessing an upsetting event, like a cashier being robbed or a factory worker seeing a serious accident happen to a coworker. We call this a “traumatic psychological injury” (TPI), and workers can develop mental or psychological conditions after these injuries. Workers’ Compensation Boards want to help workers with these conditions so that they can continue working. However, we know a lot more about the best way to prevent and treat physical injuries from work than we do for work-related traumatic psychological injuries.
Objectives:
This research project is the third in a series of research projects focused on the management of work-related (TPI). With this project, we will continue the research arc, which began with investigating treatment and assessment of TPI in a workers’ compensation context, and where we now proceed by examining approaches to the prevention of work-related TPI.
Anticipated Results:
We aim to develop a set of resources about the prevention of work-related TPI and the conditions that may result from such psychological injuries. These resources will take the form of fact sheets and other print material, which will be produced in printed and digital formats to be delivered to the WCB.
Investigators:
Dr. Sebastian Straube
