A look at the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment: Problems in workers' compensation claims involving mental disability

Mental disability claims for workers' compensation are troublesome for courts and clinicians. The overall pattern is one of a chaos of state legislative and judicial restrictions on recovery. A notable exception to this chaos is the use in the majority of American jurisdictions of the uniform system for determining mental impairment contained in the American Medical Association's Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment. The use of the Guides seems to have promoted uniformity among jurisdictions and greater acceptance of mental disability claims. A new problem with the Guides may lay ahead as the courts try to apply the third edition. This recent revision does not contain a percentage rating system for mental impairment. The availability of this system, and in the first edition of a diagnostic system, has long been attractive to courts, although it has undermined the AMA's goal of objective evaluation.