Personal Injury Lawsuits and Emotional Distress
Emotional distress is an important part of most personal injury lawsuits. If you’ve ever been injured due to another’s negligence, you know that the damages you receive are divided up into different categories. That is to say, there are two types of damage: economic and non-economic. The former are those damages that are clearly discernible such as lost wages and the cost of medical bills.
The latter, or non-economic damages, are those that are less easily tabulated. This is because not only do they differ from one person to another, but they are not as clear-cut. Non-economic damages can be loss of consortium, loss of quality of life, and the emotional and psychological harm you’ve suffered. Let’s learn a little more about what this facet of a personal injury lawsuit is.
What Is Emotional Distress?
When you suffer physical injuries, the trauma does not stop there. Many suffer psychological symptoms as well which persist long after the physical injury heals. Psychological injuries can be compensated to the same extent as physical injuries.
Emotional distress is another name for the psychological injury a person suffers during a preventable trauma caused by negligence. It reflects the serious effect an accident has from a psychological standpoint. The intensity of such is based on the type and seriousness of the accident.
Frequent psychological manifestations of an accident are:
- Anxiety
- Insomnia
- Guilt
- Depression
- Fear
- Humiliation
- Loss of enjoyment of life
How Does Mental Anguish Affect Pain?
When people experience mental anguish, it has an effect on the body, eliciting a more painful response to even resolving injuries. In addition, depression is often linked to weight gain or loss of appetite.
Unlike physical injuries, emotional anguish is harder to pinpoint or quantify, and many are reluctant to seek treatment. This makes calculating more challenging when assessing damages.
How Do You Prove Emotional Distress?
Proving emotional distress takes many factors into consideration. As for non-economic damage, it varies from one person to another and from case to case. This is why having a personal injury attorney at your side is important.
Determining the emotional effect of an accident relies on a strong interplay between the injured party and their legal consultant. It is vital that the consultant understands how the experience has impacted the client. Interacting with the family and close friends of the client is another way to gain a clear picture of the impact it had on the person’s life.
It should be noted that in some car accidents, it is not necessary to be badly injured for distress to occur. In fact, bystanders frequently are impacted when they witness a catastrophic accident.
How Do You Document Emotions?
It is important that you reveal any symptoms of psychological distress to both your lawyer and your doctor since this is a big part of your lawsuit. Keeping a diary from the time the accident happened is a good idea. This helps you monitor the many changes as the symptoms evolve and makes it easier to judge how they affect your everyday life.
Call the Olinde Law Firm in Louisiana for Help
If you are injured in an accident, you may need the legal insight an attorney provides. Call the Olinde Law Firm at (800) 587-1889, or visit us online for help. We’ve helped many clients, starting with our free case review, to get their life back together and obtain the compensation they deserve.