June 26, 2026 | Loralai Stevenson

PTSD Awareness Month

In honor of PTSD Awareness Month, we are recognizing the potential impact of PTSD in workplace disasters and near misses.

When a workplace accident occurs, how does it affect us going forward, and how can we work to heal those effects?

What is PTSD?

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as well as other kinds of trauma, is a result of the ways our brains try to protect us from future threats. When a new threat suddenly becomes present in our lives, we have to learn how to protect ourselves from it, and fear is the most effective method by which to do so.

Unfortunately, this method of protection comes with unintended consequences. Fear responses are often activated by the signals, places, and people that surrounded the individual during the incident. For example, a person with PTSD from a workplace incident may develop a fear of their workplace, daily tasks, and/or coworkers. This does not have to be a conscious fear — they may feel deeply uncomfortable despite knowing they are now safe. It can sometimes be difficult to know if this discomfort is caused by incident-related trauma or by some other stressor, and thus the underlying cause might go unaddressed.

Untreated PTSD as a Workplace Hazard

Fear can be dangerous in the workplace. For example, fear of blame can tear an investigation apart, and fear of an incident happening again can lead employees to rush their corrective actions and make mistakes. Those with PTSD tend to avoid situations that trigger fear responses, thus decreasing productivity and putting strain on other workers.

Alongside difficulties with doing daily tasks, relationships within the workplace are also often damaged by the symptoms of PTSD. An employee may blame themself for the disaster or experience survivor’s guilt. Traumatized individuals can also lose access to their typical range of emotions, causing them to experience a shorter temper, difficulty understanding others, or feeling lonely and misunderstood.

It’s important to notice these symptoms in yourself and others if your company has experienced a traumatic incident. You can protect yourself from the danger fear creates in the workplace by utilizing available solutions and crafting a safety culture that keeps employees safe.

Solutions

Be Aware of Available Resources: Your workplace likely has numerous resources for dealing with the personal effects of trauma, such as workplace counselors. Make use of them!
Seek Peer Support: Forming peer support groups or finding safe coworkers to develop a dialogue with can cause vast improvements in trust and teamwork in a trauma impacted workplace.
Seek Supervisor Support: Supervisors are knowledgeable on available resources and can help to personalize your work life to make trauma more manageable and less difficult in the workplace, but they can’t help if they don’t know!

Beyond these solutions, any workplace can begin to cultivate a safety culture today. A safety culture is defined by a workplace free of blame and mistrust. Employee concerns are taken seriously and their input is considered as action is taken to address them. A workplace with a healthy safety culture both helps a traumatized individual with the above solutions and supports them by creating a progressively safer workplace every day.