
Proving Mental Injuries: Is Expert Evidence Required?
What qualifies as a mental injury and how can it be proven? This question was recently addressed by the Supreme Court of Canada in Saadati v. Moorhead.[1] The law as developed by the Canadian lower courts prior to Saadati required claimants alleging mental injury to show that such injury had manifested itself to an expert in psychiatry in the form of a clinically diagnosed, recognizable psychiatric illness. Usually, this was done by the courts with reference to the Diagnostic