Brain & psychological injury compensation

Brain trauma cases often involve devastating injuries which can have a profound and lifelong effect on the injured person and their family. The most serious brain damage claims attract awards of up to £220,000 general damages.

General Damages for Brain & Psychological Injuries

 Personal injury compensation is divided into two main categories, one for the injuries themselves (general damages) and a second for the financial losses caused by the injury (special damages).

This second category includes compensation for loss of earnings, care, and medical expenses, and in serious brain injury cases the special damages claim can exceed £1 million.

Brain injury cases are complex and need careful treatment. Osbornes Partner Stuart Kightley and Associate Sophie Davies specialise in this area.

Other head injuries can be more subtle, where the damage to the brain is difficult to diagnose but is manifested in changes in behaviour and mood, and the ability to process, understand, and memorise information.

Cases of short lived concussion are common, and minor head injuries range from £1250 – £7000 general damages.

Brain injury can sometimes cause epilepsy. In some cases there will be one or more seizures following the accident but no longer term problems. In others there have been no seizures but the features of the injury (such as skull fracture or abnormal brain scan) indicate an elevated risk of epilepsy. Expert evidence is necessary in these cases for the risk to be evaluated and for the level of compensation to be assessed.

Psychiatric damage is as real as – and in many cases more serious and long lived than – physical injury. It includes cases of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), where the patient continues to relive the terror of the accident through intrusive dreams and flashbacks and often develops avoidance behaviour and depression. Such cases may benefit from expert intervention in the form of therapy (such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or Eye Movement Desensitization Therapy) or anti-depressant medication supervised by a psychiatrist.

It is important to remember that the victim’s subjective reaction is relevant. The Defendant must take the Claimant as he finds him, which means that the Claimant who suffers a severe psychological reaction to an injury, perhaps because of a constitutional vulnerability, is entitled to compensation for the full extent of their injury, even if another person may have got over the effect of the same injury without any difficulty.

Moderate severity PTSD attracts awards of £4500 to £12,500.

At the lower end of the scale for psychiatric damage are the cases of reactive depression, where the accident victim struggles to adapt to the pain and disability of the injury and perhaps loss or interruption of their job and their new dependence on others.

There are also the road accident cases where the victim cannot then travel without recalling the trauma of the accident. These cases attract modest general damages but it usually possible to claim the private cost of therapy to overcome the aversion behaviour.