Common Questions / Psychological Injuries
Can I recover for PTSD, anxiety, or depression after an injury?
Yes. Texas compensates the psychological injuries that ride with physical ones, the driving fear, the nightmares, the depression of a changed body, as mental anguish, past and future. What the law asks for is what treatment provides anyway: diagnosis, records, and honesty about wounds nobody can see.
The injuries that ride with the injury
Trauma does not stop at the skin. After serious crashes and violent events, post-traumatic stress is a recognized medical condition with recognized features, the intrusive replaying, the hypervigilance at intersections, the avoidance that quietly shrinks a life until the highway, then the car, then the passenger seat are all unbearable. Alongside it travel the quieter companions: the anxiety that arrives with pain, the depression of a body that no longer does what it did, sleep that never fully returns. Texas law compensates these as mental anguish and, where lasting, as future mental anguish, elements of damages as legitimate as the surgical bill, and juries, who are human, understand them when they are presented honestly.
What the law requires, stated plainly
One structural rule shapes these claims: Texas courts have generally declined to recognize a freestanding claim for negligently inflicted emotional distress, so with narrow exceptions, the closely related bystander who witnesses a horrific injury to a family member among them, the psychological case is built inside the physical injury case, as part of its damages. The proof standard is substance, not magic words: evidence of a disturbance beyond ordinary frustration, in practice best carried by diagnosis and treatment, the primary doctor's referral, the therapist's records, the psychiatrist's medication management, the testimony of the people who watched the change. An undocumented claim of anguish invites the defense to call it advocacy; a treated one is medicine.
The stigma tax, and why it costs real money
The most common failure in these cases is silence. Injured people, especially those raised to push through, do not mention the nightmares to their orthopedist, decline the counseling referral, and answer fine at every visit, and the file that results reads like a person who healed completely. The candid truth: seeking treatment for the mind is exactly as reasonable as a cast for the arm, it is the path to actually feeling better, and it is, incidentally, how the law sees the injury at all. There is no courage prize for suffering off the record, and the carrier is not grading toughness.
If the crash followed you home
Tell your doctors everything, take the referral, and let the whole injury be treated and claimed. Silver Key Law presents psychological injuries with the same rigor and dignity as physical ones, and the consultation is free and private.
Injured in Arizona? Some rules on this page are Texas-specific. Arizona differs on points that change outcomes, including pure comparative fault and government-claim deadlines. See our Arizona answers or call (888) 508-6967.
Related: What Is a Case Worth · Common Crash Injuries · Submit Your Case · All Common Questions
This page is general information about Texas law, not legal advice about your specific situation. Deadlines and outcomes depend on facts; talk to a lawyer about yours.
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