Car Crash PTSD: What You Should Know
Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome is normally associated with combat stress. Indeed, combat stress is the number one cause of this physical brain injury. However, extreme stress creates a chemical imbalance inside the brain of everyone who experiences extreme stress, not just soldiers. PTSD is also a common effect of sexual abuse. More importantly for purposes of this post, about half of crash victims struggle with PTSD symptoms.
PTSD is a latent car crash injury. ALl these victims experience some post traumatic stress. PTSD is simply post traumatic stress that lingers or gets worse instead of better. In fact, an official PTSD diagnosis might occur several months after a wreck. So, if a Sugar Land brain injury lawyer settles a case too quickly, the settlement might not fully compensate victims. If that happens, victims are financially responsible for PTSD and other uncompensated injury treatments.
Anatomy of Car Crash PTSD
In a way, PTSD is like medical malpractice-related autism. Both these brain injuries are invisible, but they have visible effects.
Newborn hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) could cause autism. When the brain doesn’t get enough oxygen in the first moments of life outside the womb, autism and other such issues are almost inevitable. Common birth HIE causes include Birth asphyxia, preeclampsia, and placental abruption.
Extreme stress, such as the stress of a life-threatening injury, enlarges the amygdala (emotional responses) and shrinks the hippocampus (logical responses). As a result these victims cannot react normally to future stressful situations, regardless of their intensity. Instead, they experience symptoms like:
- Anger,
- Hypervigilance,
- Depression, and
- Personality changes.
Some PTSD symptoms, such as nightmares and flashbacks, aren’t directly related to new stresses. Rather, they’re related to the prior stressful episode that the brain is now unable to process.
PTSD is hard to diagnose, as mentioned above. It’s also hard to treat. Available drugs usually treat the symptoms, but not the cause. Cutting-edge treatments are still in the experimental phase.
Since PTSD has a chemical cause, it has a chemical solution. Until researchers and doctors find solutions that address the needs of particular victims, car crash victims will continue to struggle with PTSD.
Liability Issues
Usually, car crashes aren’t “accidents.” Negligence, or a lack of care, causes about 98 percent of the vehicle collisions in Texas. The negligence is usually:
- Aggressive Driving: People accidentally lose their car keys. They don’t accidentally speed, tailgate, turn unsafely, or otherwise drive aggressively. Usually, aggressive drivers don’t intend to hurt anyone. But that intention is irrelevant in a negligence case. Intentional conduct is all that matters.
- Impaired Driving: Most driver impairment crashes are slow-fuse crashes which definitely aren’t accidental. In fact, in many cases, drivers ignore multiple opportunities to drive safely. Drunk driving is a good example. People can say “I’ve had enough “ after the first or second drink. Yet they choose to keep drinking and recklessly endanger other people when they get behind the wheel.
Drunk driving may involve third-party liability. Restaurants, private clubs, and other commercial alcohol sales establishments are vicariously liable for car crash and other damages if they illegally sell alcohol to tortfeasors (negligent actors). Illegal sales include underage sales, after-hours sales, and most commonly, sales to intoxicated individuals.
Other kinds of vicarious liability include negligent entrustment owner liability and respondeat superior employer liability.
Rely on a Savvy Harris County Attorney
Injury victims are entitled to significant compensation. For a confidential consultation with an experienced personal injury attorney in Missouri City, contact the Henrietta Ezeoke Law Firm. The sooner you reach out to us, the sooner we start working for you.
Source:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5779792/
