Does Emotional Distress Comprise Personal Injury?

Emotional pain qualifies as a type of personal injury. Any damage or harm that a person experience is referred to as a personal injury, and this can encompass not only bodily harm but also mental or psychological harm. Read on to learn more.

A frightening occurrence or combination of events can cause emotional distress, a form of mental anguish. It can take on many different forms, including mood disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), along with other mental illnesses. It can significantly affect a person’s quality of life and be just as incapacitating as a physical injury.

In some circumstances, emotional suffering may be seen as a separate personal injury claim. In contrast, in other circumstances, it may be regarded as a part of another kind of personal damage claim, such as a case for negligence.

For instance, if someone is injured in a car accident brought on by another driver’s carelessness, they may be entitled to file a claim for losses, which may include compensation for their emotional suffering. Or, if someone is bullied at work, they could have emotional distress, which is also a personal injury claimable condition.

The regulations governing these claims can differ based on the authority, so if you think you can file an action for psychological harm, you should speak with a lawyer experienced with the personal injury laws in your area.

Can You File a Lawsuit in Kentucky for Emotional Distress?

The response is “yes” in Kentucky. The “impact rule,” which stipulates that a person must be physically “impacted” or hurt to come back from psychological anguish, is present in some jurisdictions, however, Kentucky abolished it in 2012. Now, you have the option to file a claim against someone if their carelessness caused you to experience emotional distress. Even if you have not been hurt physically, this is still true.

Although it is not a physical injury to its victims, it is incredibly real. You might imagine a vehicle incident or another situation in which someone sustains physical harm as you consider personal harm. However, there may also be mental and emotional wounds in addition to these physical wounds. A physical injury may not always be present, but a stressful incident may still be enough to trigger it.

Healing from Emotional Wounds

In Kentucky, there has to be evidence of negligence before you can receive compensation for emotional distress—that is, anybody had a duty to you, they broke that obligation, and their breaking of that duty resulted in your injury. Additionally, mental suffering must have been so severe or terrible that no sane individual could have been able to recover from it. There has to be professional medical opinion or data from science to demonstrate the intensity of emotional distress to establish that it is severe.