Psychological Disorders as Consequences of Involvement in Motor Vehicle Accidents: a Discussion and Recommendations for a Research Program

The potential consequences of crash involvement in the Psychological domain are discussed, based on the small corpus of relevant literature and additional material concerning psychological disorders thought to occur as a result of exposure to traumatic events. The results of an analysis of Victorian crash data suggest that the lifetime risk of developing psychological disorders resulting from injury in a crash is quite high. For post traumatic stress disorder, for example, this risk is estimated at 13.1%. It is concluded that there is a need to conduct research in this area to investigate the psychological consequences of crash involvement in the Australian context and to develop and evaluate therapeutic interventions which might reduce the impact of crash involvement.