(B) LIBS and Mental Trauma
Although lifetime income benefits based on a physically traumatic injury to the brain involve organic brain injuries, it overlaps with mental illness issues because of the curious criteria used to evaluate whether the injury is severe enough to warrant lifetime income benefits.
Lifetime incomebenefits are available for:
a physically traumatic injury to the brain resulting in incurable insanity or imbecility.[43]
This is where the psychiatric issues come to the forefront. The legislature has left this section intact, only revising the causation element (from injury to the skull to physically traumatic injury to the brain), not the ultimate diagnoses applicable.
It has been held that depression does not qualify as incurable insanity[44] In that case, the Court of Appeals determined that what was termed “insanity” within the statute is now termed “psychosis” in today's medical parlance:
According to dictionary references, the term “psychosis” is now used in lieu of what was formerly termed as “insanity.” See Stedman's Medical Dictionary 876, 1460 (26th ed.1995); Dorland's Medical Dictionary 840-41, 1385 (27th ed.1988). Dr. Sobiesk, the court-appointed psychiatrist, testified that “insanity” is a serious mental illness demonstrated by psychosis in which the patient is out of touch with reality or suffers hallucinations or delusions. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 304 (4th ed. 1994) (DSM-IV) identifies symptoms of psychotic disorder as delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, incoherence, or grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior. There is no evidence suggesting that Burnett has suffered from these psychotic disorder symptoms. Under the dictionary references, Section 11a(6) mandates that Burnett must have been harmed so much by her head injury that she became psychotic.[45]
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