The Possible Consequences of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

What is PTSD?

A traumatic event can affect your life for a long time. You may even get diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which can lead to potentially severe physical and/or mental manifestations.

In these cases, individuals may need to hire a personal injury attorney to help them obtain financial assistance for their condition. Let’s take a look at some further information about PTSD and legal steps victims have to take to receive compensation.

How Is One Diagnosed with PTSD?

Not everyone who experiences a stressful event and has backflashes are diagnosed with PTSD. People with PTSD experience:

• • Reexperiencing symptoms: Individuals with these symptoms may have flashbacks and nightmares.

• • Avoidance symptoms: People with avoidance symptoms avoid anything that reminds them of the traumatic event they experienced.

• • Triggered or reactive symptoms: With triggered and reactive symptoms, individuals may become anxious or excited easily. They may also have trouble sleeping and get angry.

• Cognition and mood symptoms: Individuals who go through cognition and mood symptoms may experience depression, have trouble concentrating and not have as much interest in daily activities.

Formal Diagnosis

In order to get diagnosed with PTSD, a person has to for at least one month display:

• • One re-experiencing symptom

• • One avoidance and trigger symptom

• • Two trigger symptoms

• Two cognition and mood manifestations.

Can You Receive Benefits If You Have PTSD?

PTSD sufferers are commonly awarded social security disability. In order to receive these benefits, the Social Security Administration requires for the applicant to prove he or she experiences most of these symptoms:

• • He or she can’t adapt to different environments or complete everyday activities, like cooking, cleaning and dressing.

• • He or she can’t learn, understand or remember new information

• • He or she is unable to interact with other people

• He or she can’t concentrate long enough to complete basic tasks

There are some people with PTSD who don’t face these challenges because they reside in a medically supervised and guarded facility. These individuals can still receive social security disability if they prove they’ve had PTSD for at least two years, will require ongoing medical treatment and aren’t capable of living in a less supervised environment.

Individuals who don’t meet these requirements may still be able to receive disability payments through medical-vocational allowance, which is determined on a person’s age, employment history, education and functional capacity.

If you think your PTSD was caused by another person’s negligence, you may want to schedule a consultation with an experienced personal injury lawyer such as the personal injury lawyer  locals trust.