Accidents are traumatic. Depending on how and where the accident took place or the severity of the accident, it could affect all aspects of your life. Accidents, often create an unhealthy fear, including concerns about finances and who is going to pay the piling medical expenses. Post-accident fear could also inhibit your ability to trust certain situations or individuals again. These fears typically stem from some type of post-traumatic stress. So, do all personal injury cases require physical injury? Not necessarily. When an accident causes psychological injury, you may have a claim for a lawsuit.
What is Psychological Injury?
The Association for Scientific Advancement in Psychological Injury and Law indicates that psychological injury involves the “damage or dysfunction in one’s thinking and behaving” impairing one’s ability to function. This damage causes emotional and mental instability. The baseline for determining psychological injury is behavior prior to the accident. It is this baseline that in some cases helps the judge or jury understand how an individual can be psychologically traumatized by an accident causing long-term effects.
Proving psychosocial injury is more difficult because if the case goes to trial, juries are less likely to provide compensation for something they cannot see. What attorneys and judges also fail to recognize is how trauma can cause such psychological stress and how this stress impacts long-term disability.
This means for proving such injuries lies in:
- Client interview
- Psychological testing
- Expert testimony
Contact a Personal Injury Lawyer For Psychological Related Damages
You need not have a physical injury to file for damages. However, it takes an extremely skilled attorney to handle a psychological case. If you experience mental or emotional suffering and pain from your accident, contact Dennis and King for a free consultation.
