Can You Get Workers' Comp Benefits for Mental Health Issues in Pennsylvania?

From toxic bosses and impossible deadlines to traumatic events like workplace shootings, your job can be hard on your mental health. In fact, 40% of American workers say that their job has a negative impact on their mental health.

While all work-related mental health issues deserve to be taken seriously, not all are covered by workers' compensation laws. As a general rule, workers' comp laws allow employees to recover lost income and medical expenses when they suffer an injury or illness stemming from their job. Unlike physical workplace injuries, however, mental health conditions can be harder to measure objectively, and it can be difficult to prove that they are work related.

For these reasons, some states do not allow workers' comp coverage for psychological injuries. Pennsylvania does offer mental health coverage—but the law imposes limits on when you're entitled to recover benefits.

Pennsylvania Workers' Comp Law on Psychological Injuries

In Pennsylvania, employees are entitled to workers' comp benefits for psychological injuries, but only in certain circumstances. Pennsylvania workers' comp law recognizes three types of workplace psychological injuries:

• Physical/Mental: when a physical injury causes a psychological injury
• Mental/Physical: when psychological stress causes a physical injury, and
• Mental/Mental: when a psychological trauma causes a psychological injury.

If your claim falls into one of these categories, you're entitled to seek workers' comp benefits. But whether your workers' comp claim is successful depends heavily on the type of psychological injury you've sustained and the specific facts of your case. Mental/mental injuries are the hardest to prove, followed by mental/physical, and finally physical/mental.

Regardless of which category your case falls into, you're more likely to recover workers' comp benefits for a mental health condition in Pennsylvania if:

• a mental health professional has diagnosed you with the condition (because not all workplace stress rises to the level of a psychological injury or mental health disorder), and
• you can prove that your mental health issues were caused primarily by your work, rather than arising from a preexisting psychological condition or personal problems such as financial troubles or family conflict.

Let's take a closer look at each of the types of psychological injuries for which you can seek workers' comp benefits in Pennsylvania.

Workers' Comp Benefits for Mental Health Issues Stemming from a Physical Injury

Pennsylvania workers' comp law allows you to seek benefits when you suffer a psychological injury stemming from a work-related physical injury. You're entitled to these benefits regardless of whether your mental health condition occurred during or after the physical injury.

An example of this type of injury would be an employee who falls off a ladder at work, sustains serious back injuries, and develops severe depression as a result. Another example would be an employee who is involved in a car accident while driving for work and, as a result, suffers both physical injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Proving this type of physical/mental claim is generally no more difficult than proving a claim for a purely physical injury. One caveat is that the physical injury that causes your psychological condition must be significant enough to require medical treatment.

Workers' Comp Benefits for Physical Injuries Stemming from Mental Distress

You're also entitled to workers' comp benefits when you suffer work-related psychological stress that results in a physical injury. An example of this type of injury would be severe work stress that results in a heart attack, migraines, or ulcers.

This type of mental/physical claim is harder to prove than a physical/mental claim. To do so successfully, you need to show that:

• your work-related psychological stress caused your physical injury,
• your physical injury continues even after the psychological stress is removed, and
• you've sustained a disability or loss of earning power as a result of the physical condition, rather than as a result of the psychological stress.

Expert medical testimony is particularly useful in this type of case to help prove that your physical injury was caused by work stress, rather than by a preexisting condition such as cardiovascular disease.

Workers' Comp Benefits for Purely Mental or Psychological Injuries

Workers in Pennsylvania are also entitled to benefits when they suffer purely psychological injuries with no physical component. These mental/mental injuries occur when a work-related psychological stimulus causes a psychological injury.

Examples of this type of injury include mental health conditions that result from extraordinary situations such as workplace robberies, shootings, or prolonged sexual harassment.

Workers' comp claims for purely psychological injuries are especially challenging to prove. To prevail on your claim, you need to demonstrate that your psychological injury was caused by an "abnormal working condition."

Generally speaking, normal work stress—such as added responsibilities or difficult supervisors—doesn't constitute an abnormal working condition. Instead, you need to prove that one of two things caused your psychological injury:

• an objective, extraordinary event at work that can be pinpointed to a specific time (for example, a robbery at gunpoint), or
• longtime exposure to abnormal working conditions (for example, an employer's repeated sexual or religious harassment).

In the past, Pennsylvania courts were reluctant to find that abnormal working conditions existed in cases involving first responders. Judges reasoned that extremely stressful and traumatic events were a "normal" part of the job for workers such as police personnel, who knew the risks inherent in their profession.

More recently, however, courts have relaxed their requirements for first responders and for evaluating abnormal working conditions in general. They recognize that even in professions with high levels of stress, workers can experience very unusual or unpredictable events that cause them psychological injuries.

What's important is that the psychological injury be objectively verifiable and traceable to an identifiable source, and that the claim of abnormal working conditions be evaluated based on the facts of a particular case, rather than by comparison to other, similar cases.

How a Workers' Comp Attorney Can Help

Because workers' comp claims are often contested, they can be lengthy and complex. This is especially true for cases involving psychological injuries, as they are less straightforward than on-the-job physical injuries.

A workers' comp lawyer can help you evaluate your claim, navigate the various stages of the process, and recover the benefits to which you're entitled. Most workers' comp attorneys charge a fee only if you win your case, and don't require any money up front.