Being sent for a psychological assessment after an injury lands differently than being sent for a scan. It can feel like being asked to prove that the hardest part of this is real, to someone who has never met you.
A psychological assessment after an accident usually runs two to four hours, sometimes across two visits. It combines a long interview about your life before and since the injury with written questionnaires and occasionally cognitive testing. Nothing is done to your body. The output is a report describing how the injury has affected your mental health and daily functioning.
Before anything else, one distinction decides how you should approach the day.
Who ordered the assessment and why does it matter?
There are two very different appointments wearing the same name.
A treating assessment is arranged by you, your doctor or your treatment team, to work out what would help and to start it. The person you meet may become your therapist. The relationship is ongoing and the goal is your recovery.
An insurer or board assessment is arranged by the party paying, or deciding whether to pay. The assessor writes a report for them, will not treat you and you will likely never see them again. In Ontario auto claims this is often part of an insurer's examination. In a workplace claim it may be arranged by the board.
Both deserve your honesty. They differ in what happens next. Ask which one you are attending, and if the letter came from an insurer rather than a clinic, you already know.
What happens at a psychological assessment?
The shape is fairly consistent.
Paperwork and consent. You will be told who receives the report and what is not confidential. Read that part rather than skimming it.
The clinical interview. The longest part, often ninety minutes or more. What happened, what your life looked like before, what it looks like now, how you sleep, how you function at home and at work, and what you have stopped doing.
Questionnaires. Standardized forms on mood, anxiety, pain, sleep and daily function. Often several hundred items in total. They are scored against population norms rather than read as prose.
Cognitive testing, sometimes. Memory, attention and processing speed tasks, more likely if a head injury or concussion is part of your claim. These feel like puzzles and can be tiring.
What questions will they ask you?
More personal ones than you are braced for, and this is the part worth knowing in advance rather than meeting cold.
Expect questions about your mood and whether you have lost interest in things. About sleep, appetite and concentration. About alcohol, cannabis and other substance use, including whether it has changed since the injury. About your relationships, your finances and your work. About whether you have had thoughts of harming yourself, which is a standard screening question asked of everyone and not a judgement about you.
You will also be asked about your life long before the accident. Previous depression or anxiety, past counselling, childhood difficulties, earlier trauma, family history.
That last group is where people go quiet, and it is the single most consequential decision made in that room.
Should you mention previous mental health problems?
Yes. Concealing them is the more dangerous choice, for two reasons.
The first is practical. Records get requested. A prescription from eight years ago, a family doctor's note, a benefits claim. When history surfaces after you said there was none, the issue stops being your mental health and becomes your credibility, and that damages every other part of your file including the parts that are plainly true.
The second is that the disclosure usually helps rather than harms. Canadian law has long worked from the principle that a wrongdoer takes their victim as they find them. Someone who was already vulnerable and whose condition was worsened by an injury is not disqualified by having been vulnerable first. Aggravation of an existing condition is a recognized kind of harm, not a loophole. Speak to a lawyer about how it applies to your own claim, because the details matter, but do not go into the room believing your history is a secret you must protect.
What genuinely serves you is the distinction between then and now. Not "I have never had a bad patch," which is rarely true of anyone. Something closer to: I had a difficult year in my twenties, I was well for a decade, I was working full time and sleeping fine the week before this happened, and here is what has changed since.
What are you allowed to do during the assessment?
You can ask for a break, and you should take one if the interview opens something up. You can ask why a question is being asked. You can say a topic is difficult and ask to come back to it. You can request an interpreter, arranged formally rather than by bringing a family member. You can bring someone to the waiting room, though they will usually not sit in the interview.
You can also say plainly that today is a better day or a worse day than usual, and ask for that to be noted. A single appointment is a snapshot, and a snapshot taken on your best morning is not your life.
How will you feel afterwards?
Often worse, and nobody warns people about this.
Spending three hours describing the worst thing that has happened to you, in order, to a stranger with a clipboard, tends to leave a mark. It is common to feel drained, low, irritable or shaken for two or three days afterwards, and to sleep badly that night.
Plan the day around it. Do not schedule it before a shift, a family event or another appointment. Arrange a ride if you can. Tell one person you trust that you have it, so somebody knows where you have been.
If things feel heavier than you can carry, you can reach the Suicide Crisis Helpline by calling or texting 988, any hour, anywhere in Canada.
What should you write down after a psychological assessment?
- The date, the assessor's name and profession, and who arranged the appointment
- How long it lasted and what it consisted of, interview, questionnaires or testing
- Anything you feel was misunderstood or cut short
- Any question you found hard to answer accurately, and what you would say now
- Whether it was a better or worse day than usual for you
- How you felt that evening and for the following three days
Then ask for a copy of the report. Reading what was written about you is uncomfortable and it is the only way to correct something wrong before it hardens into fact.
The Medical Appointment Tracker, Free Starter Edition gives you a page to complete the same evening. The Pain and Symptom Tracker holds the ordinary weeks, which is the record that shows a snapshot was or was not typical.
Read next
- What happens at an independent medical examination
- Emotional recovery after an injury
- What to do after a workplace injury in Ontario
Last verified August 2026. This article is general information for people in Canada and is not medical or legal advice.