Compensation for fear and worry‐induced psychiatric illness: The Australian position

Abstract

New species of claims for psychiatric injury will cause courts to reassess the principles governing the way the common law has compensated those compromised by careless exposure to trauma. Pleas are emerging in an increasing variety of scenarios far removed from those which gave rise to the earliest suits for damages for nervous conditions. Recent litigation highlights the inadequacies of the traditional limitations on liability for the negligent infliction of psychiatric disorder, their conflict with contemporary medical and psychological opinion, and the impossibility of analysing many modem allegations by reference to them. The shortcomings of the orthodox approach are no better exposed than by the claims of those who suffer psychiatric damage through the fear or worry of future consequences following their actual or perceived exposure to disease‐causing agents.