OSHA Highlights Stress And Mental Health In The Workplace – Health & Safety

Seyfarth Synopsis: OSHA is
beginning to review work related stress as a workplace hazard
falling under its jurisdiction.

OSHA, citing a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention July
2018 publication on Mental Health in the Workplace, has released a
Safety and Health Topics bulletin addressing
workplace stress and mental health hazards. According to OSHA,
these workplace hazards have a range of potential consequences,
including related to:

• Job performance




• Productivity




• Work engagement and communication




• Physical capability and daily functioning

OSHA concludes that “[s]tress can be
harmful to our health and increase mental health challenges. Mental
health challenges can include clinical mental illness and substance
use disorders as well as other emotions like stress, grief, feeling
sad and anxious, where these feelings are temporary and not part of
a diagnosable condition. While there are many things in life that
induce stress, work can be one of those factors. However,
workplaces can also be a key place for resources, solutions, and
activities designed to improve our mental health and
well-being.”

OSHA’s concern for the mental health of the American
workforce is generally supported by the regulated community. But
OSHA has no regulations that address workplace stress and generally
does not regulate mental health hazards, even to the extent they
could be work-related. For purposes of OSHA record-keeping, mental
illnesses generally do not need to be recorded on the OSHA Form 300
log, absent an opinion on work-relatedness from a physician or
other licensed health care practitioner.

Workplace stress, to the extent OSHA could regulate it, would be
enforced under the OSH Act’s General Duty Clause. To prove a
citation relating to workplace stress, OSHA would need to show a
recognized hazard of workplace stress specific to the
worksite, that the employer was aware of the recognized hazard
(or should have been), that the employer had a “feasible or
useful” means of addressing the hazard, and that the efforts
the employer undertook to address the hazard were insufficient.

OSHA currently has no procedures in place for a workplace stress
inspection and has no standards in place indicating what would be
considered a violation of the general duty clause and what types of
abatement would be feasible or useful. Accordingly, OSHA may not
yet be equipped to inspect for hazardous levels of workplace stress
or craft a General Duty Clause citation. Therefore, we anticipate
the probability of enforcement to be remote in the short term
absent an unusual event, such as stress induced workplace violence.
However, workplace stress is clearly on OSHA’s radar screen and
we can anticipate further activity as OSHA comes up to speed on the
issue.

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guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
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