Effort Testing in Forensic Vocational Assessment

Forensic vocational disability evaluation secondary to a person’s diagnosis of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) can be a challenge since the condition is amorphous. Whether complicated or uncomplicated, symptoms of mTBI are of brief duration in the various classifications of brain injury and generally do not result in permanent deficits or disabling sequela. Regardless of classifications at the onset, it is thought that a percentage of individuals can experience, or at least claim, continuing biopsychosocial deficits following minor head trauma or concussion that may interfere with their employability. Evaluations of employability and associated earning power are nonmedical concepts explained in part by the important distinction between medical impairment and vocational disability.