Personal Injury Lawyer
Following a personal injury accident, you may be prepared to move forward with a personal injury claim because you were injured during the accident. Apparent injuries after an accident are broken bones, a brain injury, or bleeding. However, you may feel the emotional damage that may occur after an accident. It may creep up on you a few days or weeks following the accident. Perhaps you were feeling fine and glad to be on the path to recovery when you realize you are no longer comfortable driving in a car anymore or are nervous to walk on uneven pathways or places that may have water puddles. You may have developed a fear of things related to the type of accident you were in. When this is the case, you may want to speak with your lawyer about filing for compensation related to emotional damage in addition to the physical injuries that you suffered.
How can a lawyer help you with your emotional injury claim?
There is no shame in realizing that your pain following an accident is more than just physical. Emotional trauma is a real injury and it is brave to come forward to realize you need help for that trauma and to fight for compensation. Your lawyer, knows that it is not easy to come forward with an injury like this, but it can help you recover better in the long term.
What is emotional distress?
How do you know what you’re feeling would be defined as “emotional distress”? Legally, emotional distress happens when a victim is suffering from non-physical harm after an accident. Common symptoms of emotional distress are:
- Developing phobias
- Having anxiety
- Suffering from depression
- Feeling paranoid
- Losing sleep
- Having recurring nightmares
These are just a few of the symptoms you may feel if you are dealing with emotional damage following an accident. Once you have decided to move forward with an emotional distress claim, you and your lawyer will want to gather proof that emotional distress has occurred. This means that you will need to gather things like friends’ and family’s testimonies regarding how they have seen a change in you after the accident, get a medical professional’s opinion on the trauma you have gone through, and even keep journals or diary entries talking about what you are thinking and feeling and how you believe things have changed since the accident.
This can be an incredibly difficult time for you. In order to fight for compensation after your injury, it can feel like you will need to keep reliving the accident and the trauma that you have gone through. This is one of the reasons it can be so crucial to have a lawyer with you. They can help take a great deal of the legal burden off of you to help get you through this difficult period of time. If you need help with your emotional injury claim following an accident, reach out to a law firm you can trust today.
