Documenting Earnings Loss Resulting from Psychological Personal Injuries
| Publication year | 1985 |
| Pages | 983 |
| Citation | Vol. 14 No. 6 Pg. 983 |
1985, June, Pg. 983. Documenting Earnings Loss Resulting From Psychological Personal Injuries
This article describes how to develop clear, tangible evidence of the impact of psychological impairments on the ability to earn money. Personal injuries resulting in psychological disabilities do not consist solely of intangibles that cannot be quantitatively related to earnings capacity.
When a psychologist conducts an earnings capacity evaluation associated with litigation, the goals are to determine the type and cause of the psychological disability and the consequent loss of earning capacity. In the case of physical disabilities, it is customary to obtain a physical capacities evaluation from an appropriate physician and to have the psychologist provide testimony as to the impact of the medical impairment upon the client's ability to work and to earn. In the case of psychological disabilities, a parallel procedure is utilized in which one or more psychologists evaluate both the impairment and its impact on earning power. The individual is evaluated in terms of psychological capacities essential to the performance of jobs in the local or national economy. The contents of a psychological capacities evaluation are related to the requirements of the job market.
The evaluator must provide answers to several key questions:
1) What is the nature and extent of the psychological disability?
2) Did the disability occur as a result of the litigated event?
3) What evidence can be offered to prove that the disabling condition existed or did not exist prior to the litigated event?
4) How much money would the plaintiff have been able to earn if not for the injury, and how much can the plaintiff earn now?
Psychological impairment evaluations answer these questions, and evaluate an individual's current fitness for gainful employment.
The employment psychologist obtains a work history and performs testing and interviewing to evaluate the client on a number of dimensions associated with job performance.
Psychological employability evaluations are called for in assessing such earnings losses associated with brain damage, paralysis, loss of vision, posttraumatic stress...
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