What work-related mental stress reveals about the failure to prevent harm
April 23, 2026
| A Day of Mourning Message from Andrew Mudge, WHSC Executive Director |
| Accepted compensation claims for work-related mental stress are rising, but the far larger story is what those numbers reveal about the psychological harm still being built into too many workplaces. |
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| This April 28, Workers Health & Safety Centre (WHSC) will stand with workers and their advocates, calling for all to confront the full reality of workplace harms. The date set aside to mark our National Day of Mourning will see communities gather across Ontario, Canada and the world to remember workers who have been killed, injured, or made ill because of hazardous work, and to renew their commitment to safer, healthier workplaces. This year’s WHSC Day of Mourning theme—Ensuring Workers Survive AND Thrive—highlights the need to also prevent work-related psychological injuries and illnesses that often build over time, follow workers home, strain families, and leave lasting effects long after a work shift ends. One area that demands far more attention is work-related mental stress. It is real. It is harming workers across Ontario. And while some of that harm is recognized through compensation claims, compensation is not the same thing as prevention. The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) may be compensating some workers after the damage is done, but we are still not doing nearly enough to prevent mental injury and illness in the first place. That is the crisis, and it needs to be addressed in a meaningful way. The numbers point to a deeper problem WSIB data shows that accepted claims for work-related mental stress have risen sharply over the past decade. In 2016, there were 1,442 accepted claims. By 2025, that number had climbed to 3,062. That is more than double. At first glance, that rise may suggest progress. It may reflect growing awareness, greater willingness to come forward, and broader public understanding that mental injuries caused by work deserve to be taken seriously. But it should also raise a more urgent question. Namely, why are so many workers continuing to be harmed? If accepted claims are rising, the answer cannot simply be that the system is getting better at recognizing injury. It also suggests that workplace conditions continue to produce serious psychological harm. And that should concern everyone committed to worker health and safety. The true scale of harm is likely far greater Even the increase in accepted claims almost certainly understates the scale of the problem. Workplaces employed approximately 8.2 million Ontario workers as of March 2025. Statistics Canada has reported that 7.5 per cent of Canadian workers took time off work in the previous 12 months because of work-related stress or mental health reasons. Calculated for Ontario, that would amount to more than 600,000 workers missing work in a year. Not all of those absences would result in a WSIB claim. But the gap is still staggering. If hundreds of thousands of workers are missing work due to work-related stress or mental health impacts, and only just over 3,000 work-related mental stress claims were accepted in 2025, then accepted claims represent only a fraction of the harm. That means the crisis is larger than the compensation numbers suggest. And it means that relying on claims data alone can create the illusion that the system is responding adequately. Compensation is not the same as prevention Compensation systems deal with harm after it has already happened. Health and safety systems are supposed to stop that harm from happening at all. This is where the disconnect lies. If workers are becoming mentally injured or ill because of harassment, bullying, violence, chronic overload, traumatic exposure, or relentless job strain, then the issue is not only whether a claim is eventually accepted. The issue is why those hazards were allowed to persist in the first place. Too often, work-related mental stress is still treated as an individual matter instead of a workplace hazard. The focus shifts to diagnosis, claim eligibility, and post-injury support, while the root causes remain unaddressed. But mental injury and illness do not appear out of nowhere. They are shaped by working conditions. They are tied to how work is organized, supervised, staffed, and experienced. They grow in workplaces where violence is tolerated, where harassment is ignored, where demands are unmanageable, where support is weak, and where workers are expected to absorb the strain in silence. When those conditions continue unchecked, compensation becomes a back-end response to a front-end failure. A Day of Mourning focus that cannot be ignored The Day of Mourning is often associated with traumatic deaths and traumatic physical injuries, and rightly so. But if we are serious about ensuring workers survive and thrive, psychosocial health must be treated as a core occupational health and safety issue. Mental injury and illness are workplace outcomes, often rooted in identifiable and preventable hazards. That is why this issue belongs at the centre of any serious conversation about safer work. Remembering workers means remembering the full range of harm that hazardous work can cause. It means naming what too often goes unseen. And it means refusing to accept a system where we compensate some people after the damage is done, while leaving the underlying causes lying in wait for others. A call to actThis April 28, as we mourn the dead and fight for the living, we must also confront the growing mental health toll of hazardous work. We cannot be satisfied with a system that recognizes some injuries after the fact. We need action that prevents those injuries from happening at all. To learn more or find a local event near you visit our dedicated Day of Mourning Ontario page. $40 training offerAt Workers Health & Safety Centre (WHSC), we recognize the growing need for effective workplace mental health education. From now until June 30, all of our mental health training courses can be booked at a specially reduced rate of $40 per learner. Courses include Stress in the Workplace, Critical Incident & Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Workplace Violence & Harassment, and Psychosocial Hazards & Workplace Mental Health. All courses are also available as virtual French-language offerings. Register today |
| Need more information? Contact a WHSC Training Services Representative in your area. Email: contactus@whsc.on.ca Visit: whsc.on.ca Connect with and follow us on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube |
