MedicoLegal Psychiatry in Sydney, Australia | Medical and health

MedicoLegal Psychiatry

Locality: Sydney, Australia

Phone: +61 2 8399 2050

Address: Suite 203, level 2, 46 Market St 2000 Sydney, NSW, Australia

Website: http://www.medicolegalpsychiatry.com.au

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23.01.2022 Estimating Loss of Earning Capacity in Adult Victims of Child Abuse The education and career prospects of child abuse victims are frequently compromised by factors which include psychiatric injury. Typically, in personal injury matters, the assessing psychiatrist refers to the baseline pre-injury employment. Loss of earning capacity is based on disruption of employment and the enduring impact of symptoms. How should loss of earning capacity be estimated in a person who has be...en mentally ill from adolescence or early adulthood? In the context of early disruption of education and early psychiatric injury, there is no pre-injury employment baseline. We need to estimate what the claimant would have achieved if not for the psychiatric injury. Assuming that the claimant is cognitively intact, it seems appropriate to assume that he/she would have attained a level of education similar to siblings and a similar level of employability to siblings. If there is no such information available, we would predict what would have been achieved based on intellect and an estimate of the claimants ability to learn. Other factors that might be considered include parental work history and support for education, pre-injury interpersonal functioning and motivation during the claimants limited schooling.

22.01.2022 The Potential Issues of Utilising Surveillance Material in Personal Injury Matters Surveillance has become a common approach utilised in personal injury matters. The extent to which a few short surveillance opportunities should be extrapolated to reflect the general functioning of the claimant is a matter for careful consideration in each individual case. MAS Assessors, DRS Assessors and AMSs are required to give claimants the opportunity to explain any apparent inconsistenc...ies between the history provided by the claimant and the video footage. Sometimes this can yield interesting results, such as it being identified that there was hours of footage of the wrong person. Discrepancies between the claimants account of impairment and the level of functioning in the footage may compel an adjustment in the assessment of Whole Person Impairment. Less commonly, there may be such a discrepancy as to call into question the presence of a diagnosis at all. Ultimately, any substantial discrepancy between material which seems to be objective and the account provided by a claimant will compel the assessing specialist to doubt the reliability of the claimants history. See more

22.01.2022 Professional Risk - Competence to Instruct There is increasing awareness of the risks when acting for a client whose competence to instruct could be disputed. The inevitable challenge lies in the expectation that legal professionals should be able to identify what are often very subtle indicators of psychiatric or cognitive compromise. With specialist psychiatric evaluation, we have found that in many cases solicitors intuitive suspicions are often well-founded... and psychiatric compromise is identified. In other cases, it may be that despite the presence of a psychiatric condition, competence can be confirmed and the clients solicitor can continue to act with the reassurance of an expert psychiatric opinion. Early signs of dementia or the subtle effects of mild brain injury can also undermine a clients ability to evaluate matters of complexity and provide instructions in a sufficiently cogent manner. In such cases, a psychometric evaluation by an expert psychologist will prove invaluable in determining how to proceed. Our experts are available to discuss fitness issues and undertake assessments.