HR DEPARTMENT
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
As a human resources (HR)
manager or supervisor, you
are dealing with a num-ber
of employees – employees with re-al
issues and challenges. Some of these
issues and challenges are both physi-cal
and mental diseases and injuries. We
must keep increasing our knowledge in
the growing field of mental health issues
that affect our employees. Additionally,
we must increase our understanding of
our responsibility and need for the duty
to accommodate when required. In some
cases, employees’ mental health may be
impacted by post traumatic stress disor-der
(PTSD).
Until a few years ago, PTSD was a lit-tle
known phrase or descriptor. Although
PTSD is exponentially higher in veterans,
those currently in military service, po-lice
and first responders, PTSD can and
does affect a number of other people.
PTSD results from exposure to a horrific
or life-threatening experience. This disor-der
is about what happened to a person,
not about what is wrong with that person.
Some experts prefer to label PTSD as post
traumatic stress injury (PTSI) instead, as
a person recovers from an injury (whereas
we do not recover from a disorder).
A traumatic, horrific or life-threatening
event can happen easily in the heavy con-struction
field, where large equipment is
used and work can be dangerous. Even
with the best safety standards, accidents
with heavy-duty equipment are traumat-ic.
The road construction industry has
experienced workplace accidents that re-sulted
in loss of life. Saskatchewan build-ing
construction has also had accidents
that resulted in loss of life. Your cowork-ers,
employees or even you may be affect-ed
by PTSD.
PTSD can manifest itself emotional-ly,
mentally or physically. PTSD can hap-pen
very quickly after a traumatic event,
or it may hit many years later. There is no
rhyme or reason to the type and length of
time until symptoms first appear.
Symptoms of PTSD include (but may not
be limited to) numbness, guilt, anger, bad
memory, hopelessness, self-destruction,
nightmares, no focus, shame, insomnia,
hallucinations, flashbacks, violence, sub-stance
abuse and irritability. Physical
signs include (but may not be limited to)
headaches, agitation, dizziness, increased
chest pain and fainting. It is not unusual
to find that symptoms vary from person to
person, or case to case.
PTSD so overwhelms a person’s abil-ity
to cope that when something triggers
them, they go back into survival mode.
They live every day as if the impending cri-sis
could reoccur at any moment. Survival
mode or emergency mode is described as
flight, fight or freeze, and survival mode
can be dangerous to the person suffering
and everyone around them.
What human resource managers and
supervisors need to know
By Pat Varga and Leah Knibbs, Knibbs/associates Sourcing
People and Knibbs/associates HR Consulting
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saskheavy.ca | Quarter 4 2016 | Think BIG 55
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