It can be difficult to state an average settlement for PTSD after a car accident. However, your lawyer can tell you what your case is worth. After a car accident, part of your settlement could include compensatory damages for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Because this mental health condition affects everyone differently, the settlement amount varies from person to person. Our car accident lawyers can negotiate damages that reflect your personal PTSD challenges.
How PTSD Translates to Damages a Victim Could Recover
Mayo Clinic reports that while any car accident can be traumatic, PTSD is diagnosed if you still suffer from that trauma months or years after the event. The main characteristic is how symptoms interfere with your life.
When our car accident lawyers evaluate your possible PTSD damages, we investigate how the diagnosis has impacted your:
- Daily activities
- Work
- Personal life
Impact on Daily Activities
Compensation for mental disorders like PTSD often hinges on how the disorder has interfered with your regular life. Many symptoms of PTSD can be disruptive daily. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) lists several common symptoms, including:
- Flashbacks
- Distressing thoughts
- Avoidance
- Difficulty concentrating
- Sleep problems
- Reckless behavior
- Difficulty remembering
- Social isolation
- Depression
- Anxiety
Any of these symptoms could alter how you lead your life. For instance, if you consistently experience flashbacks to a car accident on the freeway, you may start to avoid driving. Loud noises may startle you in normal spaces, such as the kitchen or public areas, causing you to panic.
When we assess your case, tell us which symptoms you experience and how they have made your normal life challenging. We can use that information to build a case to secure relevant damages.
Impact on Work
If your PTSD is detrimental to your livelihood, you should be compensated for those losses. The disorder is already destabilizing – you shouldn’t have to deal with additional financial stress.
You could receive compensation for:
- Lost income
- Difficulty keeping a job
- Trouble maintaining full-time work
- Job retraining
- Reduced earning capacity
Some of these aspects are straightforward. For instance, the exact wages you lost while undergoing treatment can be reimbursed.
Other consequences will be more specific to your life, like reduced earning capacity or difficulty keeping a job. If you work in a field that consistently triggers your PTSD symptoms, you may need to completely charge careers. We can negotiate for a car accident PTSD settlement amount that acknowledges these hardships.
Impact on Your Personal Life
Mental health issues are deeply personal, so your lawyer can evaluate how the diagnosis has altered your relationships, sense of self, and interior life by including damages for:
- Pain and suffering
- Emotional distress
- Mental anguish
- Quality of life
- Disfiguring injuries
- Disability
The exact circumstances of your accident can play a role here. Perhaps your PTSD is linked to a specific injury, such as burns or facial scarring. Maybe you lost a loved one in the accident.
Your treatment may have also contributed to your trauma. If you underwent extensive surgery or a particularly grueling recovery process, you could carry emotional wounds related to those experiences.
In short, this category of damages is tailored to the specific mental pain you faced because of the other party’s negligence. Those consequences deserve compensation.
For a free legal consultation, call 404-214-2001
How We Provide Evidence of PTSD After a Car Accident
Issues like PTSD can be challenging to prove because they occur in the mind. However, we can utilize several avenues to back up the value we assign to your case, such as:
- Expert witnesses
- Medical evidence
- Billing and paperwork
- Type of accident
Expert Witnesses
While your personal experiences are valid, insurance companies and negligent parties may argue that your symptoms are not as severe as you claim or that you do not have PTSD. Your lawyer can combat this by consulting specialists to support your account.
That includes:
- Doctors
- Psychiatrists
- Therapists
- Economists
- Actuaries
These authorities can testify to your case’s worth by outlining how your symptoms meet the criteria for a PTSD diagnosis and describing their impact on your physical and mental health, long-term finances, and quality of life.
Medical Evidence
Insurance companies and negligent drivers will have trouble denying the hard evidence found in your medical records. We can use your other injuries from the accident to support your PTSD diagnosis, such as:
- Broken bones
- Disfigurement
- Burns
- Traumatic brain injuries
- Loss of limb
- Wrongful death
Serious injuries, disabilities, and the loss of a loved one in a crash contribute to trauma. Providing evidence of them is therefore also providing evidence of your PTSD.
Billing and Paperwork
Another way to demonstrate the value of your trauma is the paper trail. Records of seeking treatment illustrate that you suffered an injury, whether physical or psychological. We can use bills and paperwork from:
- Hospital stays
- Prescriptions
- Over-the-counter medications
- Therapy
- Psychological evaluations
- Follow-up appointments
- Support animals
Receipts, medical records, referrals, and prescriptions all create a body of evidence. This is harder for the other party to disprove, and establishes some of the concrete costs of your treatment that should be reimbursed.
Type of Accident
Just as your specific injuries can be linked to PTSD, the type of crash can also provide evidence and determine the value of your personal injury case. Particularly traumatizing accident scenarios include:
- T-bone crashes
- Pedestrian accidents
- Bicycle accidents
- Rollovers
- Truck accidents
- Fires
- Multi-car collisions
Mayo Clinic lists fire and life-threatening medical diagnoses as contributing factors to PTSD. If your car accident involved those factors, we could highlight their association with this diagnosis.
You can suffer PTSD from other types of accidents, though, so don’t let anyone claim your crash wasn’t “serious enough” to cause trauma. If you’re in mental pain, we’ll fight for compensation.
Don’t Suffer in Silence – Call Kaine Law’s Car Accident Lawyers
Determining the settlement amount for PTSD after a car accident involves getting to know you – your experiences, career, and lifestyle, and how this disorder has tainted those areas of your life.
At Kaine Law, we establish a relationship with our clients to understand the many ways an accident has affected them. Then, we fight for compensation to reflect that experience. Partner with us today by calling (404) 214-2001.
Call or text 404-214-2001 or complete a Free Case Evaluation form
