Customer Reviews

Psychiatric Aspects of Personal Injury Claims (American Series in Behavioral Science and Law)

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From a review in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry (1990, vol 24, pages 578-579), by Paul Skerritt: This book is the magnum opus on the subject without doubt... All of the ordinary psychiatric diagnoses which are so often overlooked in patients with personal injury claims are carefully described... This will make the book useful to lawyers and insurance people who should certainly have it by them. The many medical practitioners including psychiatrists who go to court with a view of all compensation patients as an amorphous or homogenous mass should also take note of the difference in diagnosis which can occur. The particular influence of chronic pain or traumatic injury on such diagnoses as the varieties of anxiety and depression can be found clearly expressed in this work. It can be said that no assertion is made by the author without careful reference to the literature. There is still much to learn about this difficult subject, but this book attests that we do have a body of knowledge to which we can refer, in place of the prejudices which are too often carried into the clinical assessment of these unfortunate patients... George Mendelson's book should be widely read and regularly in the hands of psychiatrists who wish their opinions to be based on the accumulation of knowledge rather than guesswork. Lawyers, judges and the insurance industry should also make good use of it.