Malingering in personal injury or workers' compensation claims cost both the insurer and the consumer. Detecting such fraudulent claims benefits us all, especially because claims of psychological injury for compensation have increased significantly in recent times. For example, psychiatric disability claims have risen approximately 200 percent in the 1990s alone. The cost of workers' compensation insurance has risen 50 percent in just the last three years. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights reported the following in an article titled “Mental Health Care Fraud: No Petty Crime”:

The U.S. General Accounting Office estimates that health-care fraud alone costs up to $100 billion each year. Of this, estimates rate the mental health-care industry contribution at up to $40 billion. By contrast, the FBI reports that the nation's total losses from street crime were less than $18 billion in 2002. In fact, one of the largest health-care fraud suits in history involved mental health.

It is often difficult to evaluate claims of psychological injury that are attributed to a specific cause (such as a traumatic event) since at any one time more than 28 percent of the adult population in the U.S. has a diagnosable psychiatric or substance abuse disorder. Furthermore, 25 percent of the population report annually that they are on the verge of a nervous breakdown.