PTSD

Firefighters, security personnel, and policemen all are quite susceptible to PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Their jobs place them in harm's way every day. Many of these great people do not handle PTSD well.

A PTSD claim in Georgia will go nowhere. Georgia does not recognize PTSD as an injury. Georgia law requires a physical injury first; then if PTSD follows at some point thereafter, PTSD could be considered a part of the job injury claim.

Georgia is clearly in the minority when it comes to psychological condition becoming the primary “accident”. Why is this so? The Legislature is the source of the laws regarding workers' compensation. There has been little interest in expanding the law to include PTSD or any primary psychological condition as the origins of a job injury.

Various actors (or as they are now called “stakeholders”) in the workers' compensation arena, argue that the costs for treatment of psychological conditions would “go through the roof” if allowed. Bad for business, they say. So we can easily see who the workers' compensation system is protecting… and it is not the injured workers.