BC Ministry of Labour recently announced easier access to workers’ compensation for psychological injuries caused by work-related trauma from selected occupations.
The announcement made in a June 10 media release indicates that 11 new occupations added to the mental-health presumption under the Workers Compensation Act include: community-integration specialists, coroners, harm-reduction workers, parole officers, probation officers, respiratory therapists, shelter workers, social workers, transition house workers, victim service workers and withdrawal-management workers.
In 2018, the BC government amended the Workers Compensation Act to establish a new mental-health presumption for municipal and federal firefighters, police, paramedics, sheriffs and correctional officers.
Then, in 2019, additional occupations were added, including emergency response dispatchers, nurses, publicly funded health-care assistants, as well as forest firefighters, fire investigators and firefighters working for Indigenous organizations.
According to the release, the mental-health presumption fast tracks the claims process with WorkSafeBC and provides workers faster access to treatment and workers’ compensation benefits once a formal diagnosis of the psychological injury has been made.
A presumption under the Workers Compensation Act provides that if a worker has been employed in specific occupations and develops a disease or disorder that is recognized as being associated with that occupation, then the condition is presumed to have been due to the nature of their work, unless the contrary is proved.
With the changes there is no longer a need to prove a claimant’s disease or disorder is work-related once a formal diagnosis has been made.
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