When an employee sustains a job-related injury, one would assume they simply have to wait until their scars or wounds heal. But it’s important to remember that physical injuries not only affect your body. It may also affect your mental health, especially when it comes to injuries that lead to permanent damage.
But in the case of the working class, even a short-term injury can lead to a massive impact on your mental health. In fact, a UK study has established that long-term and short-term injuries often result in mental health problems, especially to the working-age group, with depression and anxiety being the most common effects. Job related injuries have a huge range. Some can happen to couriers who need the help of an excellent motorcycle accident lawyer, and others can be caused on the road for truckers. Job related injuries aren’t just about what happens in the office or in a warehouse capacity – they can happen day to day, too.
One question that might not be as evident is how injuries can lead to mental health problems. Read on to find out four ways work injuries can affect your mental state.
1) Overthinking Can Lead to Anxiety
When you sustain an injury in the workplace, chances are you’ll be encouraged to stay at a hospital for a full recovery. Since you’re most likely going to be left alone for a while, you’ll have a lot of time to think about the repercussions of your injury, especially regarding your financial situation.
How high would your hospital bills be once you’re discharged from the facility? Will your next salary have a massive reduction? Can you survive this financial crisis? These thoughts would eventually pile up and lead to mental health problems, primarily anxiety.
The good news is you can solve this problem by seeking compensation from your employer. Of course, you have to ask your personal injury lawyer if it’s a winnable case first. If you do win the case, not only can you pay for your hospital bills, but you’ll also receive extra compensation to get you back on your feet. Otherwise, you might have to deal with anxiety on top of your physical injuries. This applies to both short-term and long-term injuries.
2) Changes in Lifestyle Can Affect Mental Health
It’s an established fact that whenever there’s a transition in your lifestyle, you’re bound to experience changes in your mental health. For example, if you adopt a healthier lifestyle, your mental health would drastically improve. Similarly, if your lifestyle changed for the worse, the same would happen to your mental health. That’s why when you sustain an injury that makes life harder, you’ll suffer mentally as well.
Such injuries often make mundane tasks harder than they should be. By losing the capabilities you once had, even if temporarily, life can feel overwhelming. That’s when you’ll develop various mental health problems.
3) Isolation Can Lead to Depression
You should also know that being isolated generally results in depression. Unfortunately, when sustaining an injury, isolation is pretty much guaranteed. You’ll be left in a hospital bed without accompaniment most of the time, which may feel like you’re cut off from society.
This isolation would lead to numerous emotional responses such as sadness, irritability, disengagement, sleep deprivation, and lack of motivation. This is even more the case for job-related injuries since you’ll slowly lose your social connection among your colleagues, which can have a considerable impact on your work even after recovery. Of course, a solution to this is simply to interact with the people in the facility such as nurses, doctors, or other patients.
4) Injuries Can Cause a Trauma
Although job-related injuries have a connection to your mental health in a complex manner, sometimes, the relationship between the two is much simpler. Injuries can cause mental health problems simply because of the injury itself, or more precisely, the trauma that resulted in the injury. For example, if a heavy object fell on your arms, chances are you’ll have intrusive thoughts about that same accident during your recovery.
You’ll become fearful of the work environment, suffer from nightmares, and may even self-isolate yourself as a result. The extent of this problem would depend on how traumatic the experience was, so it’s not common with job-related injuries since it only often involves slips and falls.
Conclusion
Physical injuries are closely linked to your mental health, but it’s a big deal when it comes to job-related injuries. This is mainly because when you sustain an injury, you tend to suffer from mental health problems too. Thus, hindering your job performance and overall work-life balance.
Since mental health problems tend to make recovery go slower, it can lengthen your recuperation, and the longer you’re out from work, the more overwhelmed you’ll feel. Simply put, it’s a cycle of grief, that’s precisely why it’s essential to resolve the issue immediately by seeking treatment plans to make the process go a lot smoother and faster.