Trauma-Informed Mental Health Care for Injured Workers
Workplace injuries are often more than physical.
They can leave lasting psychological effects that disrupt daily life, relationships, and the ability to continue working, or return to employment as soon as possible.
What is PTSD?
Post-traumatic stress disorder, more often simply called PTSD, is a disorder that can keep traumatic experiences present as part of day-to-day life for years to come. Without appropriately processing a traumatic experience, its aftermath can negatively affect relationships, career, and even the ability to complete your day-to-day activities. On this page, you can learn more about how therapy helps in the process of healing trauma and what to expect from working with our team of caring clinicians.
Understanding PTSD in the Workplace
Trauma is any event or set of experiences that overwhelms a person’s ability to process the situation in safe, healthy ways.
A traumatic injury can occur after one overwhelming event or due to numerous, smaller traumas. When these traumatic events occur, the brain responds by triggering a fight, flight, or freeze response in the moment. For some, this response is alleviated once the trauma is resolved. Others may struggle to turn off this response, which can lead to prolonged side effects and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
What Are the Effects of PTSD?
If you’ve been struggling to fully recover after a traumatic experience, it’s important to be vigilant of warning signs related to PTSD, including:
Flashbacks – traumatic experiences feel like they are happening again.
Nightmares – may be about the events themselves or just generally upsetting dreams.
Detachment – difficulty bonding with others or withdrawing from loved ones.
Disinterest – loss of interest or enjoyment in favorite activities.
Avoidance – staying away from any reminders of a traumatic experience.
Self-destruction – impulsivity, promiscuity, self-harming, substance, and other self-destructive behavior use may be used to cope with the effects of PTSD.
Irritability – mood swings, short temper, and changes in emotions.
Vigilance – being hyper focused, worried, or paranoid.
Physical effects – elevated heart rate, difficulty breathing, trembling, and sweating are common.
Left untreated, PTSD can interfere with work performance, family life, and physical recovery. Unfortunately, many injured workers suffer in silence, not realizing that their emotional and psychological symptoms are normal responses to abnormal events—and are highly treatable with the right care.
How We Can Help
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Initial Evaluation
We conduct a thorough psychological evaluation at the outset of treatment. During the initial diagnostic evaluation process, we gather a detailed history of the precipitating incident(s), symptoms and impairments, and personal and employment history. We use this information to provide a diagnosis, information on causation, and treatment plan.
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Evidence-Based Individual Treatment
If we find that psychotherapy will assist a patient with restoring their occupational functioning, we provide brief treatments that follow MTUS and AECOM guidelines. When helping folks with stress injuries, we typically use modalities such as Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), which are structured approaches strongly supported by empirical studies.
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Return to Work Planning
Although it can feel daunting (or even frightening!) to return to work after experience psychological trauma, we have seen that patients generally feel better and more self-confident when they are at work in some capacity. We collaborate with patients to develop individualized return-to-work plans, including specific modifications to allow them to maintain some type of work routine as they recover from their traumatic stress injury.
Our Approach: Patient-Centered, Evidence-Based, and Work-Focused
We treat every patient as a whole person—not just a case number. Our approach is:
Patient-Centered: We listen closely to each individual’s goals, needs, and values in order to tailor evidence-based treatment plans.
Trauma-Informed: We prioritize emotional safety, transparency, trust, and choice in every aspect of care.
Evidence-Based: The Medical Treatment Utilization Schedule (MTUS) and ACOEM guidelines provide specific recommendations for evidence-based treatment for psychological injuries in the workplace. We craft our treatment plans to be in alignment with these guidelines in order to provide a high standard of care as well as reduce miscommunication between involved parties.
Return-to-Work Oriented: We support patients not just in symptom reduction, but in restoring function, resilience, and confidence to either stay at work, or resume employment as soon as possible.
What we do:
We can help by providing trauma-informed, evidence-based mental health care in alignment with the MTUS and AECOM Guidelines. We are here to support not just symptom relief, but functional recovery, so that patients can reclaim their confidence, stability, and work readiness after a traumatic event.
We recognize the unique challenges faced by injured workers, as well as the responsibilities held by their support teams, including attorneys, claims adjusters, physicians, and return-to-work support systems. That’s why our care model is collaborative, timely, and goal-oriented, ensuring that every stakeholder receives clear communication, clinical documentation, and coordinated support for return-to-work planning.