Pain and Suffering Reimbursement: Weighing Emotional Distress...

Pain and suffering reimbursement is included in most personal injury settlement awards. The actual injury and physical pain shouldn't be the only things included in your claim - the emotional distress you've suffered also counts as damages.

The problem is that emotional distress falls into the same trap as pain suffering settlements. It isn't something that's tangible, so proof that it exists and finding a dollar value for it isn't always easy.

Emotional problems following an accident affect many people and can be quite serious. Victims should be compensated for it in their pain and suffering reimbursement.

Emotional distress can show itself in various ways. The stress and physical discomfort felt after an injury might disrupt a person's social life, or make it difficult to interact with family members.

If a mother is injured to the degree that she's unable to care for a child for any period of time, it could be very traumatic. Similarly, after bad car accident, it's often too fear-inspiring for a victim to get back in a car - doing so might be extremely stressful and nerve racking.

This means they won't be able to drive to work or social functions. If they do drive it might cause severe emotional distress.

Of course, proving that someone has these symptoms isn't easy. In some cases, like the mother, it's pretty much accepted that there will be some infliction of emotional distress. However, when it's a relatively minor accident it'll be harder to prove the symptoms.

If the accident is more severe, it will be easier to convince others that they too would be traumatized in that situation. This is where auto accident photos can help. The idea is to show the insurance claim adjuster that emotional distress could easily exist, and that a jury would be sympathetic.

Sometimes emotional distress is severe enough that you need to seek help with someone other than your medical doctor. It's common for victims of a traumatic event to seek emotional help from a psychologist or some other mental health professional. The expense of this kind of therapy can often be claimed in your pain and suffering reimbursement. Also, the very act of going to therapy shows that the emotional distress was severe.

The claim adjuster has the right to a medical records request from a therapist, just like any other medical professional. But you can limit their access to information only directly related to the accident. You don't have to give them access to your entire mental health history.

Once you've verified that you suffered emotional distress caused by the personal injury accident, you've got to turn it into a dollar value. You'll do this in the same way you added up your pain and suffering reimbursement (by multipying your general damages by a factor of 1-5x).

In fact, in most cases, this will be added into the same equation. So where you'd have used a multiplier of two, severe emotional distress may bring your multiplier to three or four.