Minnesota workers’ compensation classifies three different types of mental injuries
- Mental-Mental: This is where a psychological stimulus causes a psychological condition. An example of a mental-mental injury would be depression caused by work stress. Workers’ compensation will not cover the majority of these injuries.
- Mental-Physical: This is where a psychological stimulus causes a physical response. An example of this might be where extreme stress causes a heart attack or stroke. Ordinarily this type of injury would be compensable under workers’ compensation.
- Physical-Mental: This is where a physical injury causes a psychological response. An example of this would be injuring ones back and subsequently developing depression from living with the pain. This type of mental injury is compensable.
Our Attorneys Can Help You with Mental Injuries
The key to any injury under workers’ compensation is to prove that the symptoms or ailment you have are causally related to the work injury. This can be especially difficult with mental injuries.
The work injury does not have to be the only cause of your disability; it can be a combination of work related and non-work related injuries, but it must be a substantial contributing cause. For example, if you have depression because of pain from your injury and because of money stress, it is probably compensable. If your depression is only related to your money stress, which would be a mental-mental injury, it is not compensable.