Mental and Nervous Injury in Workmen's Compensation
![handle is hein.journals/vanlr23 and id is 1257 raw text is: VANDERBILT LAW REVIEW
VOLUME 23 NOVEMBER 1970 NUMBER 6
Mental and Nervous Injury in Workmen's
Compensation
Arthur Larson*
I. INTRODUCTION
[H]ow could it be real when. . . it was purely mental?'
This poignant judicial cry out of the past, which I occasionally
quote to put down my psychiatrist friends, contains the clue to almost all
of the trouble that has attended the development of workmen's
compensation law related to mental and nervous injuries. This equation
of mental with unreal, or imaginary, or phoney, is so ingrained
that it has achieved a firm place in our idiomatic language. Who has not
at some time, in dismissing a physical complaint of some suffering friend
or relative, airily waved the complaint aside by saying, Oh, it's all in
his head?
The impact of this pervasive preconception on compensation
decisions can be briefly stated. A high proportion of the cases display a
search for something-anything-that can be called physical to
supply the element of reality in the injury. If the courts find this
element, they are quite happy to award compensation even though the
injury viewed as a whole is preponderantly mental or nervous. But if no
such physical component can be identified, even some of the more
sophisticated appellate courts still find themselves unable to justify
compensation for a work-connected mental or nervous disability.
The cases may be thought of in three groups: (1) mental stimulus
causing physical injury; (2) physical trauma causing nervous injury; and
(3) mental stimulus causing nervous injury. The first two categories are
by now almost universally accepted as compensable. The third is the
battleground where new law, reflecting the increasing ability of medicine
and psychiatry to speak authoritatively on the causes and consequences
* Professor of Law and Director of the Rule of Law Research Center, Duke University
School of Law. A.B. 1931, LL.D. 1953 Augustana College; MA. (Juris.) 1939, D.C.L. 1957,
Oxford University.
1. Hood v. Texas Indem. Ins. Co., 146 Tex. 522,537,209 S.W.2d 345,354 (1948) (Smedley,
J., dissenting joined by Brewster & Folley, JJ.).
1243](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/vanlr23&div=59&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Mental and Nervous Injury in Workmen's Compensation
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most