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Trauma Assessment in Personal Injury and Employment Discrimination Cases

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Assessing Trauma in Forensic Contexts

Abstract

When individuals believe that they have been harmed by the actions of other people or of organizations, the US legal system affords them avenues of relief in either the tort or civil rights lawsuits. These cases often stem from experiences of trauma—emotionally painful experiences that occur in a short time frame—such as auto accidents, or repeated painful experiences that occur in the context of sexual harassment, a hostile work environment, or disability or racial discrimination. When mental health professionals are brought into the case by lawyers or by the court, their job is often to assess the plaintiff to determine if the alleged traumatic events have resulted in either transient emotional harm (e.g., “pain and suffering”) or long-term emotional harms that constitute the bases for emotional damages. This chapter focuses on the routes leading to these evaluations, a conceptual framework for conducting the evaluations, and how the mental health professional can be of greatest assistance to the judge and jury.

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  1. University of New Mexico Department of Psychology, Albuquerque, NM, USA

    William E. Foote

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Foote, W.E. (2020). Trauma Assessment in Personal Injury and Employment Discrimination Cases. In: Javier, R., Owen, E., Maddux, J. (eds) Assessing Trauma in Forensic Contexts. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33106-1_13

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