STANLEY L. GOODMAN, M.D. – Qualified Medical Examiner #962948
Diplomate, American Board of Psychiatry & Neurology
in Forensic, Child, Adolescent, Adult, Addiction, and Geriatric Psychiatry
MAIN OFFICE – 5535 Balboa Boulevard, Suite 215, Encino, California 91316 Phone: 818-986-7826 Fax: 818-986-7834
E-mail: slgoodmanmd@goodmanforensic.com ~ Website: www.stanleylgoodmanmd.com
SATELLITE OFFICES – Los Angeles ~ Pasadena ~ Long Beach ~ Cerrtios
Orange ~ Rancho Cucamonga ~ Oxnard ~ Palmdale ~ Bakersfield
OBESITY PREVENTION WEIGHT MONITORING
Both applicant and defense attorneys should be united on obesity prevention.
Applicant attorneys should discuss this with new and prior patients.
The patient’s weight should be recorded from the first time they go to an industrial clinic to the present time.
Injured workers first go to industrial clinics. Therefore, an industrial clinic should have some basic advice for injured applicants such as getting, for example, the book “Super Immunity” and making changes in their diet because they will have to have significantly decreased food intake.
The applicant and his or her significant other needs to be spoken to directly since, for example, the spouse may be cooking for the injured worker.
When the patient is first injured, he should be given a card with his weight. Injured workers should weigh themselves at least once a week. If there is any weight gain over 5 pounds in the first month of treatment, then this is a red flag.
Applicant attorneys can be seen as especially sympathetic because they can tell the applicant that if they gain weight, they run the risk of increased rates of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and hypertension. Especially with these diseases, obesity may significantly reduce the applicant’s life span. Therefore the effect of obesity is to worsen the applicant’s self-esteem, which is already damaged after the injury, whether mental or physical.
Obesity has basic effects that are psychiatric and/or psychological.
An obese applicant frequently will get very depressed. This depression is industrially related. When the applicant attorney tells his patient that he has a workers compensation injury, and is not going to be exercising as much as he did before because he is not working, the attorney should tell the applicant he needs to check his weight at least once a week.
The office will help the claimant review his diet so that his weight remains stable.