When someone is compensated for physical injuries after a car accident, they should certainly be covered for the medical bills they have paid and will take on in the future. These medical bills as well as their lost income can then be multiplied in order to calculate damages for their "pain and suffering" because of the crash. If the car accident was particularly severe, the compensation for suffering and financial costs may also cover mental and emotional injuries. Keep reading to understand more about these types of injuries and how they could factor into your claim.

This emotional anguish could be anything from shock to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A seemingly "minor" mental injury could result in outbursts of sobbing or anger, decreased appetite, sudden weight loss and gain, lethargy, trouble sleeping, and more. This might pass in the weeks after a collision, but more serious injuries could mean that person should go see a medical and/or psychological expert. As already mentioned, the emotional injuries from a car crash could lead to a serious diagnosis such as PTSD, something that can entail a long road of recovery.

How do you prove these injuries? Proving physical injuries can be difficult enough, such as if a plaintiff sustained whiplash and other soft tissue injuries. And just as with these cases, medical records could be the evidence you need for emotional injuries. Now, if you have simply suffered some emotional distress after a car accident, then you probably have not sought treatment for this. Your own testimony can be sufficient and convincing; it is not hard, after all, to believe that a car accident could produce shock and anxiety. But if you have a mental or emotional injury that requires medical help, then you will need a mental health provider to be a witness, describing your diagnosis.

The good news is that a jury or an insurance company will usually consider that a claim of emotional injury has merit, within reason. Someone is not going to get away with claims that they suffered acute mental anguish after a mild rear-end accident that resulted in some bruises. If physical injuries are not serious, then an insurer and a jury will not be able to believe that the emotional injures are severe.

Do claims of emotional anguish matter in your car accident case? Maybe not. If the stress was relatively minor, then it can be important to bring this up, to show that you had a natural response to a serious event. In cases where serious mental distress has been inflicted, then the costs of getting treatment from a mental health professional should be factored into compensation for medical bills. They may even be included when an adjuster calculates your lost income. But all in all, these mental injuries are often lumped together with the physical injuries, and that in a general way affects how damages for "pain and suffering" are calculated.

Here is how those calculations work in a straightforward case. If an adjuster is using a multiplier, then certain conditions will determine what that multiplier is. For example, if an innocent victim suffered from a drunk driving accident, then the multiplier would go up. The severity of your injuries, and the length and extent of your recovery would also be considered when determining the multiplier. Then the adjuster would add up your medical bills as well as your lost wages, and use the multiplier on this amount. In many cases, the multiplier could be 1.5 to 4.

Sometimes, pain and suffering is calculated through a "per diem" (per day) method. This tallies your daily expenses due to the accident, as it were. You could estimate the daily cost of dealing with pain and getting medical treatment to be equivalent to your daily income. Then this tally would be lower for, say, the following 14 days after you ended treatment but you still had lingering pain.

To understand more about what your claim could be worth, get in contact with an experienced car accident lawyer from our directory today!