PSYCHIATRIC/PSYCHOLOGICAL
EVALUATION AND TREATMENT

You may be sent to a psychiatrist in connection with your workers' compensation claim. If your claim is for emotional harassment or discrimination, stress, etc., the reasons for this evaluation are clear. However, if your injury is a physical one, you may wonder why you are being referred for psychological evaluation.

If you have been referred to a psychiatrist or psychologist, you must have reported -- during the intake phase of your case -- that you are experiencing anxiety, depression, gastrointestinal upset, nervousness, or sleeplessness. These are symptoms or problems which can be appropriately evaluated and treated by psychiatrists or psychologists.

Another reason to get psychological help is that the California workers' compensation system does not compensate for pain and suffering. When an individual has an injury to one part of their body, it will likely affect their emotional or mental well-being. For this reason, we obtain reports from psychiatrists to document when some individuals suffer an emotional disability as a result of their physical injury.

It is essential that you tell each and every doctor you see about all of your complaints, both physical and mental or emotional, regardless of whether the doctor is seeing you for physical or emotional complaints.
 
....PSYCHE COUNSELING

A work injury can be one of the most stressful events in your life. In most cases, psychological counseling does wonders to help ease the confusion, frustration and depression that injured workers so often feel as a result of a work injury. However, help of this kind is rarely provided.

Why is this so? First, insurance companies do not want to pay for psychological counseling. Secondly, traditional doctors often ignore the emotional aspect of a work injury. Insurance companies would rather spend thousands of dollars fighting a claim for emotional stress than provide counseling. This attitude is unfortunate and, in the long run, far more costly. There clearly seems to be a relationship between mental attitude and the healing process.

We have spent too many years watching injured workers fall into a vicious cycle. Usually when people are first injured, they are optimistic that they will heal quickly and return to work. However, when this does not occur, people become less hopeful and begin to dwell on the negatives.

Numerous studies have shown that the longer a person is out of work, the less likely he or she will return to the job at which they were injured. We believe this is due to a vicious cycle of pain and depression, which we see in many of our cases. Over time, our clients become less and less active and independent. Many become incapable of handling the simplest decisions in life.

It does not have to be this way! Even if your physical injury is not getting better, you can help yourself by changing your mental attitude. However, most people cannot do this on their own. They need psychological help to break the cycle of pain and depression. Professional mental health counseling can help you regain a sense of self confidence and self-worth, the benefits of which will be felt long after your doctors have released you from their care.
 
We hope this information will be helpful to you.

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