Personal injury cases often focus on the physical injuries that impact a victim’s life. Life-altering head injuries, spinal cord injuries, and other physical ailments certainly affect the way a person lives following any kind of accident, but the mental health impacts are just as important.
The impacts on mental health from these injuries can last longer than it takes for wounds to heal. Through the years, mental health has been increasingly addressed in personal injury cases. Since enduring a car accident can open the door to mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), it’s important to look at how these effects are being recognized in personal injury law.
How Mental Health Is Increasingly Becoming a Factor in Personal Injury Claims
For many injured victims, these conditions can be triggered by the physical pain they feel, the disruptions caused by the accident, and the stress of the added financial burdens resulting from the accident. In personal injury cases, damages are divided into economic and noneconomic damages. One of the requirements for proving negligence is that the defendant caused injuries, which led to economic damages such as medical bills, lost wages, property damage, and other out-of-pocket expenses. However, noneconomic damages such as mental anguish, pain and suffering, and other emotional traumas may also be sought in a lawsuit.
The reason it is harder to seek noneconomic damages is because they are intangible, making them harder to prove. However, a reputable Houston personal injury lawyer can help prove these mental impacts. It requires documenting these emotional challenges much in the same way you would document a physical injury.
Insurance companies and the courts are much more receptive to claims of emotional trauma when these impacts have been documented extensively by mental health professionals. Medical evidence that includes reports from therapists, psychologists, or psychiatrists can strengthen your case by showing you suffered significant mental and emotional impacts in your accident.
Seeking Therapy as Part of Your Recovery
When you have been seriously injured in an accident that someone else caused, your primary focus may be on treating those physical injuries. However, a good attorney will recommend you get the help you need through therapy and counseling. Your doctors treating your physical wounds will likely also recommend these resources as mental and physical impacts are often intertwined. You’ll have a better chance of healing when you address both simultaneously.
Your mental health treatment also plays a major role in your personal injury case. You’ll get the help you need to recover emotionally while strengthening your case. These medical records for treating your mental conditions will be used as evidence to show the extent of how your injury has impacted your life.
What Happens If You Ignore Your Mental Health After a Personal Injury Accident?
Your doctors and your attorney may see the signs that you are struggling and encourage you to seek therapy for the mental impact. This is sound advice that should never be ignored. Failing to address your mental health conditions while you are involved in a personal injury case can have severe consequences in the long term.
The most important reason to get mental health treatment is that these conditions often worsen over time. They may further impede you from living a normal life, especially if you become fearful of even getting into a vehicle after your accident. Additionally, ignoring your mental health can mean that you do not get the full amount of compensation you need to cover the expenses that resulted from the accident. The at-fault party will be required to cover the damages that they caused you to suffer, and this will include the treatments for your mental recovery.
What Attorneys Do to Support Mental Health
Most personal injury attorneys take their oath to represent their clients seriously and have empathy for their circumstances. You’ll know you’ve found an attorney who truly cares about you when they insist that you have your mental health evaluated and follow through with the treatments recommended by doctors.
The goal is to get you back to a state that is as whole as possible after your accident. Lawyers focus on all the legal details while encouraging their clients to get the medical care they need for physical and mental improvement. You can focus on your treatments while your attorney works to educate the insurance companies and the court about the severity of your condition and fight for your fair settlement.
In today’s legal landscape, personal injury attorneys are increasingly understanding of the importance of mental health and how it impacts an injury. They prepare themselves accordingly for the pushback when they commit to standing up for clients’ legal rights.
Challenges Remain for Proving Mental Health Impacts in Personal Injury Cases
Despite a sharper focus on the impacts that accidents can also have on mental health, there are many obstacles in the way. However, it is not impossible to prove mental health conditions have been caused by your injuries. It is simply a greater challenge, and no good attorney will ever shy away from it.
They will take the challenge involved with showing the burden of proof, though you must do your part as well. Since emotional traumas are invisible, it is only natural that skepticism will arise. The key to proving you have endured mental impacts is through proper documentation of your condition.
Your attorney will insist that you get the help you need so that you feel better. This also helps serve your case better by creating medical records of your mental condition. As you continue to go to your therapy appointments, these impacts go from invisible to visible. Along with the testimony from experts, it can prove that your PTSD, depression, anxiety, or even vehophobia all stemmed from the injury you suffered in the accident the defendant caused.
Armed with this evidence, your attorney will be better poised to advocate for your best interests and settlement. Times have changed in that mental health is something that is more openly discussed, and this may also bode well for your compensation in a personal injury case.
