Understanding Your Personal Injury Case And Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Whether you were involved in a car accident or other serious incident, the trauma associated with it can often leave you struggling with the effects of post traumatic stress disorder. If you've been stricken with anxiety and fear or overwhelming difficulty moving on with your daily life after your injury, you may find that a personal injury attorney can help you pursue restitution through a personal injury lawsuit. Here are a few things that you should know about post traumatic stress disorder as it can relate to your personal injury.
Recognizing the Signs of Post Traumatic Stress
Post traumatic stress disorder comes with a wide variety of symptoms. In addition to unexplained anxieties, you may be preoccupied with the accident itself. You might find that you are stressed by loud sounds, news reports about accidents and injuries like yours or even exposure to environments like the one you were injured in. In other situations, post traumatic stress disorder comes with flashbacks, insomnia and restlessness. For people injured in a car accident, it may even cause apprehension about driving again.
Addressing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
If you believe that you have post traumatic stress disorder, you'll want to reach out to a doctor as soon as possible. He or she will complete a full evaluation to determine if your symptoms are, in fact, related to that condition. If your diagnosis is confirmed, your doctor will recommend things like therapy and even anti-anxiety medication or other treatments. If your doctor confirms that the condition may have been caused by the accident, you should also contact a personal injury attorney to find out your legal rights.
Proving Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Proving post traumatic stress disorder isn't always easy in a personal injury case, particularly because it is considered an invisible injury and it's difficult to prove the correlation between the symptoms and your accident. In addition, some people still consider symptoms like these to be temporary or minor and not worth compensation.
One of the most important things you can do to prove your condition is to obtain documentation from a medical professional and a therapist or psychiatric specialist. Those medical records should detail your symptoms and struggles, which should make it easier to connect those to the injury.
In addition to the documentation, your personal injury attorney may ask you to have your doctor testify in court. That provides expert information about the severity of your symptoms as well as the chances that you have of a full recovery. In most cases, this combination of things will help to prove your claim.
Understanding the Compensation Available for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
In most cases, post traumatic stress disorder is compensated as a long-term injury, much like scarring or disfigurement. That's because the condition requires extensive treatment and a long recovery time. That means that you'll end up paying medical expenses for treatment and potentially medication for many years to come. Your attorney will increase the amount requested in damages for this purpose. If the condition also interferes with your ability to lead a normal life like what you did before, you might even get further damages for the lasting effects on your quality of life.
There's no reason to suffer with the symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder without pursuing some form of legal case against the person or persons responsible. With the help of a personal injury attorney and your health care team, you'll be able to document your symptoms, your treatment plan and the direct effect that the other person had to cause your symptoms. You might be able to seek damages for your condition as well as for the actual injury itself.
For more information, contact an experienced attorney or visit sites like http://www.danielgoodmanlaw.com.
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