A petition created by the British Columbia Police Association (BCPA) is pushing to amend the province's Workers' Compensation Act (WCA) to include coverage and treatment for cumulative mental stress in police officers.
The act currently limits mental stress coverage to workers who experience a sudden and unexpected traumatic event, as opposed to those who might suffer long-term psychological damage resulting from cumulative stress in the workplace, argues the BCPA, whose 2,500-person membership consists of the province's 11 municipal police services as well as members of the South Coast BC Transit Association Police Services.
Under section 5.1(1) of the WCA, workers are eligible for compensation for mental stress not resulting from an injury if the mental stress is "an acute reaction to a sudden and unexpected traumatic event arising out of and in the course of the worker's employment."
This type of acute mental stress may be classified as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), defined by the Canadian Mental Health Association as being caused by a "psychologically traumatic event involving actual or threatened death or serious injury to oneself or others."
One problem that might emerge with the BCPA's proposal to classify mental stress is the fact that that unlike PTSD, cumulative mental stress is not an official condition under the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), which provides standard nomenclature for the classification of mental disorders. (workersxzcompxzkit)
In its petition, the BCPA argues that by awarding police officers coverage for mental stress, the government would benefit from fewer long-term health problems among police officers, reduced costs associated with extended appeals, treatment being initiated sooner to minimize time off work and a shift in the organizational culture of police work to validate the illness and prompt officers to seek help more readily.
Author Robert Elliott, executive vice president, Amaxx Risks Solutions, Inc. has worked successfully for 20 years with many industries to reduce Workers' Compensation costs, including airlines, health care, manufacturing, printing/publishing, pharmaceuticals, retail, hospitality and manufacturing. He can be contacted at: [email protected] or 860-553-6604.
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