Psychological Injury

Although courts have historically acknowledged the importance of compensating victims for physical injuries caused by another’s wrongful conduct, they have been more reluctant to award compensation for emotional harm or psychological injury. Today, however, it is broadly accepted that emotional damages are compensable. Given ongoing concerns about the potential for exaggeration—or, more rarely, deliberate faking of psychiatric symptoms, forensic psychiatrists play a critical role as expert witnesses in personal injury cases.

In many personal injury cases, plaintiffs present with histories of multiple traumatic experiences, resulting in complex symptom profiles that span cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and physical domains. Symptoms may arise under varying degrees of conscious and unconscious control, including dissociative phenomena, and individuals may partially or wholly misattribute certain symptoms to particular traumatic events. Distinguishing which symptoms are genuinely trauma-related, which may reflect unconscious psychological processes, and which may be influenced by secondary gain or other non-traumatic factors is often a critical and nuanced task.

In these complex cases, experience working with multifaceted psychiatric presentations is essential. Skills in clinical hypnosis and structured interviewing techniques can help elicit deeper layers of information, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of symptom origins, levels of awareness, and psychological defenses. Forensic psychiatrists with this background are uniquely positioned to help courts navigate these intricacies, providing expert assessments that move beyond surface-level symptom endorsement to a more rigorous understanding of the underlying psychological dynamics.

Other special examples of personal injury cases include worker'’ compensation evaluations, Social Security Disability evaluations, private psychiatric disability evaluations, and Compensation & Pension Evaluations for Veterans.