The Legal Realities of PTSD Claims: A Medicolegal Panel Discussion

Let's talk now about, um, how you navigate someone with PTSD from a, a, from a practical perspective, say Charlotte's role as a lawyer, particularly when you have avoidance.

Um, and I guess that brings the bigger question of what is a trauma-informed process, and how do we make allowance? So I'll maybe ask you to comment first on that before I pass over to Charlotte, doctor.

Well, I guess by the time it gets to Charlotte, the process has been rather protracted.

Hopefully, many of them don't get to you because they will improve with natural resilience and psychiatric first aid.

But unfortunately, uh, a lot of people don't have early interventions.

There are events that have happened previously, particularly in employment, if they happen to be the third person who's lost a finger or a hand in the workplace and work haven't acted, and they decide that a legal remedy is a path that they're going to follow.

Dealing with somebody with PTSD, um, I guess the first thing you as a lawyer want to know is-

Yeah, certainly

... their experience of what they've been through.

That is often very difficult because people, when they've had awful traumatic experiences, don't want to talk about it.

They don't-- They try not to think about it.

One of the reasons that they get the dreams is because they don't think about it, and they haven't processed it, and it comes through a dream, which is the royal road to the unconscious.

When they're making their statement, you need to be very empathic.

You need to let them set the pace.

You need to let them perhaps use a narrative that they've written before, and you shouldn't interrogate them.

That increases anxiety.

It sometimes makes them feel that their symptoms are being doubted when you ask a whole heap of questions.

So that can mean cross-examining them, interrogating them-

Yeah

... asking them repeated questions.

Mm.

I mean, you need to prepare them for what is Re-traumatization, essentially.

The legal process is at least as traumatic-

Mm-hmm

... as the original stressor because I mean, they've got to tell their story 15 times.