Claimants who have experienced an event which has caused physical or psychological/emotional injury and been the result of someone else’s actions can make a claim under UK Civil Law.

In order to process such a claim, the individual and his/her legal advisor need to obtain medical evidence concerning the physical and psychological symptoms. Their lawyer may instruct a variety of different expert clinicians depending on the type of injury.

Typically, a psychologist or psychiatrist will be instructed to assess the emotional problems. This type of interview will assess the type of symptoms, their duration, the history prior to the injury and following the injury, and the need for any further treatment or rehabilitation.

The term ‘injury’ implies that the severity of these symptoms can vary from, at one end, mild symptoms which are variable, possibly short-lived, and do not last for any length of time, to, at the more severe end, prolonged symptoms which are persistent, ongoing and cause significant disruption to the claimant’s psychological, social and/or occupational well-being. In this latter example, it is probable that the symptoms would meet the criteria for, what is called, a ‘recognised psychological disorder’ using the criteria laid out in one of the two classification schemes commonly used (DSM-V and ICD-10).

This psychological assessment provides a reliable and valid opinion of the type of psychological injury based on several sources of information.