There are many different type of claims involving psychological symptoms and all of the claims may not be trustworthy. Experts conducting forensic mental health assessments must distinguish among claims in which a person is consciously exaggerating the extent of emotional distress for the purpose of financial gain and/or to avoid work or jail (malingering), claims in which a person is exaggerating the extent of real emotional distress but not consciously, and claims that are based on realistic representations of symptoms and their cause.
A recent survey of personal injury evaluations estimated that about 29% of the cases involved probable falsification of cognitive symptoms. This means that people claimed to have had difficulty concentrating and said that they were more forgetful and more distractible after the injury than they were before it.
The defense attorney typically argues that the claimant’s injuries are due to pre-existing conditions; the plaintiff attorney will likely argue that even though the claimant may have a pre-existing condition, a person may still have been harmed psychologically. Psychological assessment reveals the extent that the claimant’s reporting of symptoms is genuine or that the claimant may be malingering or exaggerating the severity of symptoms. Such assessments provide important information to both the defense attorney and plaintiff attorney. If a claimant is exaggerating, then the damages sought would be minimized for the client; if the claimant is not exaggerating, then the damages sought would be bolstered for the client.
How do psychological evaluators differentiate genuine symptoms from falsified or exaggerated symptoms? Interviewing the claimant, reviewing medical documents and reports from other providers, along with other sources of information, provide the foundation on which psychological experts will base their opinions. However, there are various kinds of psychological tests that focus on the symptoms of mental disorder or cognitive disability that are utilized in the expert’s opinion and psychologists are the only mental health professionals qualified to administer these tests. These tests, in conjunction with the interview, and the other sources of information, are what increase the confidence that an attorney has in the expert opinion proffered by the psychologist and is what differentiates evaluations conducted by psychologists from those done by other professionals.
Suppose a woman alleges Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) because she was sexually assaulted at knife point in an underground parking garage and becomes depressed and fearful of going places alone after the assault. The psychological evaluator needs to assess whether the claimant’s symptoms are due to the assault or not. It may be that the claimant had the two symptoms prior to the assault. If that is true, the evaluator would need to demonstrate in what ways, if any, the claimant’s symptoms worsened. If, on the other hand, the claimant was not depressed and was not fearful of going places alone prior to the assault, then the evaluator would need to demonstrate how the claimant’s mental state changed due to the assault. Psychological testing can reveal to what extent, if any, the injury had exacerbated any changes the client’s mental status.