08/08/2024
What goes unseen: The emotional impact of personal injuries
By Katie Hughes
When you or someone you love are in an accident, the physical injuries such as the dent in your license plate or the neck pain you’re experiencing often get the most attention.
However, the injuries that can be seen are not the only damage that result from an accident. Too many times, the most severe and impactful injuries are often the most overlooked: the emotional ones. According to the National Library of Medicine, each year, more than 50 million people around the world experience trauma due to traffic accidents.
Common emotional responses to personal injuries include anxiety and fear, depression, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the loss of enjoyment of life.
When it comes to accidents, it’s easy to focus on what’s tangible, on what makes sense. It is challenging, and oftentimes more painful, to focus on what is actually affected the most: us.
When Rachel, a resident of Cartersville, went shopping one day at Walgreens, she never anticipated that she would get into a car accident. However, when she pulled out of her parking spot in the Walgreens lot, she was hit by an Amazon truck that slammed her from behind and pushed her right onto the highway.
Immediately after the accident, the physical ailments bore the forefront of the attention. Although the damage done to Rachel’s car was mild, she was left with neck and shoulder pain, and visits to the chiropractor. Rachel even had to have emergency surgery to remove her appendix, after the impact of getting rear ended induced appendicitis.
However, despite the physical injuries that Rachel endured after the accident, it was the emotional ones that persisted.
Rachel recalled that when she got home the night of the accident, she was exhausted, nervous and had a loss of appetite.
“It was such an emotional toll,” she said.
Although Rachel’s physical injuries began healing, her emotional ones were heightened.
“I was anxious all the time about driving,” she said. “I didn’t want to drive in the rain, I didn’t want to drive in small parking lots, I didn’t want to go out at night.”
This anxiety began to seep into Rachel’s everyday routine, and she found herself avoiding driving as often as she could. She recounted the way she’d schedule out her day to do all of her tasks at the same time – running errands, going to the grocery stores, picking up her kids – to avoid the anxiety that accompanied driving. The more she left her house to drive, the greater the risk was of her getting into another accident.
“That’s a bigger chance something could happen,” she said.
To cope with her emotions, Rachel began incorporating activities like yoga and walking into her daily routine. These activities alleviated some of the stress she was experiencing and helped her heal both physically and emotionally. However, it was time that helped the most.
As she realized that her new, anxious way of living was not feasible, Rachel began to let go, and trust the driving “process.”
“The truth is,” she said, “not everybody gets in accidents every time they drive.”
Although Rachel was able to find ways to cope with her accident and is healing because of it, not everyone is as lucky.
In an article from Farah & Farah, a personal injury law firm in Georgia and Florida, most people will experience anxiety immediately after a car accident, and 5.8 percent of car accident survivors develop persistent anxiety that can diminish their quality of living. Depression affects approximately 17.4 percent of car accident survivors, and PTSD affects approximately 32.3 percent of car accident survivors, according to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine.
Despite these statistics, the conversation about mental health after a car accident is scarce. Rachel likened it to the narrative about postpartum depression.
“Until it was spoken about and talked about and addressed, nobody really talked about it or knew about it,” she said. “Did it exist? Yes…just it was taboo and not spoken about.”
And as many things go, people don’t pay much attention to it until it has affected them or someone they love.
“People just don’t know,” Rachel said. “They’re not aware of it until they've been through it, and then they’re like, ‘Oh, I was different before than I am now.’”
According to Denise B. Klinkner, M.D., M.Ed., Mayo Clinic level 1 pediatric trauma medical director, “There is no correlation between the severity of the injury and one's potential for acute stress reaction or even long-term post-traumatic stress disorder.” Therefore, anyone, no matter the severity of the car crash or injury, is susceptible to developing mental health issues after an accident.
Rachel’s advice to anyone who finds themself struggling is to talk about it – whether that’s with a professional or your closest friends and family.
“Sometimes people don’t know what you’re going through, so I do feel like it’s important to talk about it,” she said.
Although Rachel still parks away from other cars in a parking lot and “gets her steps in,” her mental health has improved and her routine is back to normal. She may not be exactly the same as she was before the accident, but no one is. And it’s up to us to make that sentiment known.
What does this mean to you, the client?
At The Herro Law Firm, we will ensure we take into account not only the physical injuries and the financial damages that an injury may cause to you, but the mental impact as well. It is our mission to obtain the full amount of what your case is worth and without accounting for the mental anguish of an injury, then the claim is undervalued. We will do everything in our power to make sure ALL aspects of a claim are advocated on your behalf to lead to the best result for you.
