It is common to see that when someone suffers a physical injury at work, there can be a secondary psychological condition that also develops in response to the trauma or physical injury. These conditions can include Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (“PTSD”), anxiety, depression or adjustment disorder.
When lodging a claim with WorkCover, it is important that if a Claimant is suffering from any psychological symptoms that they include this injury in the initial claim. This ensures a timely acceptance of the injury and access to treatment funding.
We quite often see Claimants who develop psychological symptoms but do not make WorkCover aware of this initially. If they raise it further into the claim, WorkCover will often offer adjustment to injury counselling sessions.
A common misconception by Claimants is that the adjustment to injury counselling means that WorkCover have accepted their psychological injury on the claim. However, more often than not, this is not the case.
It is important to have a psychological injury noted on a workers’ compensation medical certificate and formally request that WorkCover accept the injury. Failure to do so can result in WorkCover not funding the full amount of treatment required or consider how the injury is impacting someone’s work capacity.
This can often mean that when a Claimant is cleared to return to light duties from a physical perspective, but they are experiencing significant psychological symptoms, they will be forced to return to work, failing which WorkCover may threaten to cut off benefits. This is because the psychological injury and subsequent impact cannot be accepted by WorkCover when it is not an accepted injury.
It is important to seek legal advice early so this can be checked to ensure that all injuries are accepted on a claim in a timely manner.
