Human emotional suffering has been studied for centuries, but the significance of psychological injuries within legal contexts has only recently been recognized. As the public becomes increasingly aware of the ways in which mental health affects physical - and financial - well-being, psychological injuries comprise a rapidly growing set of personal injury insurance claims. Although the diverse range of problems that people claim to suffer from are serious and often genuine, the largely subjective and unobservable nature of psychological conditions has led to much skepticism about the authenticity of psychological injury claims. Improved assessment methods and research on the economic and physical health consequences of psychological distress has resulted in exponential growth in the litigation related to such conditions.Integrating the history of psychological injuries both from legal and mental health perspectives, this book offers compelling discussions of relevant statutory and case law. Focussing especially on posttraumatic stress disorder, it addresses the current status and empirical limitations of forensic assessments of psychological injuries and alerts readers to common vulnerabilities in expert evidence from mental health professionals. In addition, it also uses the latest empirical research to provide the best forensic methods for assessing both clinical conditions such as posttraumatic stress disorder and for alternative explanations such as malingering. The authors offer state-of-the-art information on early intervention, psychological therapies, and pharmaceutical treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder and stimulating suggestions for further research into this complex phenomenon.A comprehensive guide to psychological injuries, this book will be an indispensable resource for all mental health practitioners, researchers, and legal professionals who work with psychological injuries.

This book offers a welcome expansion on key concepts, terms, and issues in causality. It brings much needed clarity to psychological injury assessments and the legal contexts that employ them. Focusing on PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and chronic pain (and grounding readers in salient U.S. and Canadian case law), the book sets out a multifactorial causality framework to facilitate admissibility of psychological evidence in court.

The purpose of The Pain of Helping is to provide a source that identifies, condenses, and consolidates information pertaining to psychological injury. In addition to providing details regarding construct definition, information pertaining to symptomatology, assessment instruments (e.g. structured interview, questionnaires), treatment options, leading theoreticians, journals, books, and web sites are also included. This book will serve as a primary source and directory for additional information pertaining to psychological injury. To date, there has not been a concerted effort to synthesize and consolidate the literature of psychological injury and present this valuable information in a systematic and methodological fashion.

This book is a comprehensive analysis of the definitions, concepts, and recent research on malingering, feigning, and other response biases in psychological injury/ forensic disability populations. It presents a new model of malingering and related biases, and develops a “diagnostic” system based on it that is applicable to PTSD, chronic pain, and TBI. Included are suggestions for effective practice and future research based on the literature reviews and the new systems, which are useful also because they can be used readily by psychiatrists as much as psychologists. In Malingering, Feigning, and Response Style Assessment in Psychiatric/Psychological Injury, Dr. Young ambitiously sets out to articulate and synthesize the polarities involved in the assessment of response styles in psychological disabilities, including PTSD, pain, and TBI. He does so thoroughly and very even-handedly, neither minimizing the degree that outright faking can be found in substantial numbers of examinees, nor disregarding the possibility that there can be causes for validity test failure other than malingering. He reviews the prior systems for classifying evidence of malingering, and proposes his own criteria for feigned PTSD. These are conservative and well-grounded in the prior literature. Finally, the book contains dozens of very recent references, giving testament to Dr. Young's immersion in the personal injury literature, as might be expected from his experience as founder and Editor in Chief for Psychological Injury and the Law. Reviewer: Steve Rubenzer, Ph.D., ABPP Board Certified Forensic Psychologist

Winning Your Personal Injury Claim teaches you what to do after you or a loved one has been hurt. It gives you the precise instructions you need to settle with an insurance adjuster, handle the attorney for the other side and win a court battle.

The Encyclopedia of Psychological Trauma is the only authoritative reference on the scientific evidence, clinical practice guidelines, and social issues addressed within the field of trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder. Edited by the leading experts in the field, you will turn to this definitive reference work again and again for complete coverage of psychological trauma, PTSD, evidence-based and standard treatments, as well as controversial topics including EMDR, virtual reality therapy, and much more.

The construction industry is vital to any national economy; it is also one of the industries most susceptible to workplace incidents. The unacceptably high rates of incidents in construction have huge socio-economic consequences for the victims, their families and friends, co-workers, employers and society at large. Construction safety researchers have introduced numerous strategies, models and tools through scientific inquiries involving primary data collection and analyses. While these efforts are commendable, there is a huge potential to create new knowledge and predictive models to improve construction safety by utilising already existing data about workplace incidents. In this new book, Imriyas Kamardeen argues that more sophisticated approaches need to be deployed to enable improved analyses of incident data sets and the extraction of more valuable insights, patterns and knowledge to prevent work injuries and illnesses. The book aims to apply data mining and analytic techniques to past workplace incident data to discover patterns that facilitate the development of innovative models and strategies, thereby improving work health, safety and well-being in construction, and curtailing the high rate of incidents. It is essential reading for researchers and professionals in construction, health and safety and anyone interested in data analytics.

Trauma is defined as a sudden, potentially deadly experience, often leaving lasting, troubling memories. Traumatology (the study of trauma, its effects, and methods to modify effects) is exploding in terms of published works and expanding in terms of scope. Originally a narrow specialty within emergency medicine, the field now extends to trauma psychology, military psychiatry and behavioral health, post-traumatic stress and stress disorders, trauma social work, disaster mental health, and, most recently, the subfield of history and trauma, with sociohistorical examination of long-term effects and meanings of major traumas experienced by whole communities and nations, both natural (Pompeii, Hurricane Katrina) and man-made (the Holocaust, 9/11). One reason for this expansion involves important scientific breakthroughs in detecting the neurobiology of trauma that is connecting biology with human behavior, which in turn, is applicable to all fields involving human thought and response, including but not limited to psychiatry, medicine and the health sciences, the social and behavioral sciences, the humanities, and law. Researchers within these fields and more can contribute to a universal understanding of immediate and long-term consequences–both good and bad–of trauma, both for individuals and for broader communities and institutions. Trauma encyclopedias published to date all center around psychological trauma and its emotional effects on the individual as a disabling or mental disorder requiring mental health services. This element is vital and has benefited from scientific and professional breakthroughs in theory, research, and applications. Our encyclopedia certainly will cover this central element, but our expanded conceptualization will include the other disciplines and will move beyond the individual.

This expert compendium surveys the current state of military psychology across the branches of service at the clinical, research, consulting, and organizational levels. Its practical focus examines psychological adjustment pre- and post-deployment, commonly-encountered conditions (e.g., substance abuse), and the promotion of well-being, sleep, mindfulness, and resilience training. Coverage pays particular attention to uses of psychology in selection and assessment of service personnel in specialized positions, and training concerns for clinicians and students choosing to work with the military community. Chapters also address topics of particular salience to a socially conscious military, including PTSD, sexual harassment and assault, women’s and LGBT issues, suicide prevention, and professional ethics. Among the specific chapters topics covered: · Military deployment psychology: psychologists in the forward environment. · Stress and resilience in married military couples. · Assessment and selection of high-risk operational personnel: processes, procedures, and underlying theoretical constructs. · Understanding and addressing sexual harassment and sexual assault in the US military. · Virtual reality applications for the assessment and treatment of PTSD. · Plus international perspectives on military psychology from China, Australia, India, and more. Grounding its readers in up-to-date research and practice, Military Psychology will assist health psychologists, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, and clinical social workers in understanding and providing treatment for military populations, veterans, and their families, as well as military psychologists in leadership and consulting positions.