Legal Definitions - Mental Anguish

In legal terms, mental anguish refers to a significant degree of mental pain and suffering that one person inflicts upon another. It is often used interchangeably with emotional distress in personal injury lawsuits. When someone experiences mental anguish due to another party's actions, they may be able to seek compensation for the harm caused.

Legal claims for mental anguish typically fall into two main categories:

• Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress: This occurs when someone deliberately or recklessly acts in a way that is so extreme and outrageous that it causes severe emotional suffering to another person. The actions must go beyond what a civilized society would tolerate.
• Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress: This arises when someone's carelessness or failure to uphold a duty of care leads to another person's severe emotional distress. This type of claim is generally more difficult to prove and often requires a specific relationship or circumstance where the defendant had a clear responsibility for the plaintiff's emotional well-being.

To successfully claim mental anguish, the affected individual usually needs to provide evidence of their suffering, which might include medical records, therapy notes, or testimony from mental health professionals.

Examples of Mental Anguish:

• Example 1 (Intentional Infliction): A landlord, wanting to evict a tenant without proper legal procedure, repeatedly sends threatening and abusive messages, cuts off essential utilities like water and electricity for days at a time, and spreads false, damaging rumors about the tenant to other residents. The tenant, suffering from severe anxiety and depression as a result, is forced to move out and seek psychological counseling.

  How it illustrates the term: The landlord's actions are intentional, reckless, and clearly "outrageous and extreme" as they go far beyond acceptable behavior. These deliberate acts directly caused the tenant significant mental pain and suffering, fitting the criteria for intentional infliction of emotional distress.

• Example 2 (Intentional Infliction): A disgruntled former employee, seeking revenge, creates a fake social media profile impersonating their previous manager and posts highly offensive, fabricated content designed to humiliate the manager professionally and personally. The manager experiences severe public backlash, professional damage, and intense emotional distress, leading to panic attacks and difficulty performing their job.

  How it illustrates the term: The former employee's actions are deliberate and malicious, intended to cause harm. The nature of the false and offensive posts could be considered "outrageous and extreme" in their attempt to destroy the manager's reputation and cause severe emotional suffering.

• Example 3 (Negligent Infliction): A pharmacy negligently dispenses the wrong medication to a patient, giving them a powerful stimulant instead of their prescribed sedative. The patient, unknowingly taking the wrong drug for several weeks, experiences extreme paranoia, hallucinations, and severe sleep deprivation, leading to a mental health crisis requiring hospitalization.

  How it illustrates the term: The pharmacy had a professional duty to dispense the correct medication safely. Their negligence in fulfilling this duty directly led to the patient's severe mental pain and suffering, even though there was no physical injury from the drug itself. This demonstrates negligent infliction of emotional distress where a duty of care was breached, impacting the patient's emotional and mental well-being.