Absenteeism caused by work-related mental health problems is generally managed through group insurance plans offered to companies. However, as the table below shows, an increasing number of cases are being compensated by the Commission de la Santé et de la Sécurité du Travail (CSST, workers' compensation board).

As stipulated in section 1 of the Act respecting industrial accidents and occupational diseases (Q.S. 1985, C.6), employment injuries are compensated under the statutory compensation plan.

Under section 2 of the IAODA, an employment injury means an injury or a disease arising out of or in the course of an industrial accident, or an occupational disease, including a recurrence, relapse or aggravation.

It should be specified that the IAODA does not make any distinction between mental injury and physical injury. Therefore, claims for a mental injury are considered, just like those for a physical injury, as an industrial accident or an occupational disease.

Moreover, it seems that, in the event of a contention, the attention is not focused on the diagnosis of employment injury made by the worker's physician but rather on the link or lack thereof between the said injury and the work. In fact, under section 224 of the Act, the CSST is bound by the diagnosis and the other findings of the attending physician unless it contests them through the medical evaluation procedure. However, the CSST is not bound by the physician's opinion regarding the existing link between one or more events that occurred at work and the development of the mental injury. Therefore, the CSST and, if there is an appeal, the Commission des lésions professionnelles (CLP, employment injury board), will have to decide on whether or not there is a link between the mental injury and the work by examining the evidence presented by the parties.