Abstract
Workers’ Compensation is designed to promptly compensate employees injured in the course of employment. In the past forty years, most states have extended workers’ compensation recovery to employees who suffer from a mental injury resulting from their employment. In Illinois, however, employees seeking to recover for employment-related mental illnesses must overcome a higher evidentiary standard if they work as a first responder or a similar position where they are trained for, and exposed to, traumatic situations on a regular basis. Statutory language and case law interpreting the use of a higher evidentiary standard are unclear as to whether a first responder, or a similarly situated worker, may recover for mental injuries at all. This comment argues that first responders cannot be singled out and burdened with a higher evidentiary threshold, and the state’s legislature must provide definitive legislation on the subject.
Recommended Citation
Nicholas B. Haynes,
Indecisiveness in Compensating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: Where Does Illinois Leave First Responders?,
34
S. Ill. U. L.J.
151
(2009).
Available at:
https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/siulj/vol34/iss1/5