The Vermont legislature recently modified the way that psychological injuries (a.k.a. mental-mental injuries) are covered under Vermont workers’ comp law.  With the exception of psychological injuries arising from a physical injury (a.k.a. physical-mental injuries), psychological injuries arising purely from a person’s work used to be covered only if they arose out of an event or stressor which was “extraordinary and unusual” with respect to similarly situated employees.  In other words, if a person worked in a job in which all of his or her coworkers experienced the same event or stresses every day, psychological injuries arising out of that event or stressor would not be covered because everyone was subjected to the same stress — it was not extraordinary or unusual.

That law has now been changed, and only requires that “the work-related event or work-related stress was extraordinary and unusual in comparison to pressures and tensions experienced by the average employee across all occupations.”  In other words, we are no longer asking whether a person was subjected to greater stress than his or her coworkers, we are asking whether the person was subjected to greater stress than the typical employee experiences, regardless of their profession.  The question that still must be answered, however, is who the “average employee” is that we are comparing to.  What do they do for work?  Do they work in Vermont?  In the United States?  On the other side of the world? The “average employee across all occupations” question has yet to be answered by the Vermont Department of Labor, and will likely end up before the Vermont Supreme Court at some point in the next few years.  Stay tuned…

Another significant change to the law regarding psychological injuries is that a first responder diagnosed with PTSD is now presumed to have sustained that psychological injury in the line of duty.  In the past, the law presumed that if a first responder sustained a heart attack in the line-of-duty, his or her work caused that heart attack.  That presumption did not apply to psychological injuries, however.  Fortunately, we can now add PTSD to the list of injuries that are presumed to be caused by the traumatic work that police officers, ambulance workers, and firefighters perform every day.  This change means it is now the insurance company’s burden to prove that first responder’s PTSD did not arise out of and in the course of his or her work, as opposed to requiring the first responder to prove that it did.  This will greatly benefit first responders by allowing them to begin receiving treatment and counseling much more easily than if they had to prove to the Vermont Department of Labor that their work caused their psychological injury.