Events
Event Information
Remote Event
Mon 02-Feb-2026, Microsoft Teams
INNEG invites you to this free lunchtime webinar with Dr Bruno Silva, Consultant Neuropsychiatrist and Expert Witness, who will provide practical clinical insight into how neuropsychiatric symptoms are assessed, interpreted, and relied upon in medico-legal settings.
Drawing on real-world medico-legal experience and anonymised case examples, Dr Silva will explore how neuropsychiatric evidence can clarify causation, differentiate functional and organic presentations, and support defensible opinions on condition and prognosis.
Claims involving persistent cognitive, emotional, or functional symptoms without clear structural pathology remain some of the most challenging, and contested, cases in both personal injury and clinical negligence litigation.
Disputes around diagnosis, causation, symptom validity, and prognosis frequently sit at the heart of these claims, particularly where conditions such as Functional Neurological Disorder (FND), Functional Cognitive Disorder (FCD), chronic fatigue, or neuropsychiatric sequelae of brain injury are alleged.
This session will help you to:
- Understand how functional and neuropsychiatric symptoms commonly present in PI and CN claims
- Identify diagnostic and evidential pitfalls in cases without clear structural pathology
- Appreciate the role of neuropsychiatric assessment in causation, symptom validity, and prognosis
- Strengthen instructions to neuropsychiatric experts and interpret reports with confidence
- Improve defensibility in claims involving FND, chronic fatigue, cognitive complaints, and complex psychiatric presentations
About the Speakers
Dr Bruno Silva
Consultant Neuropsychiatrist & Medico-Legal Expert Witness
Dr Bruno Silva is a Consultant Neuropsychiatrist and Medico-Legal Expert Witness providing independent opinion in personal injury, clinical negligence, and criminal/forensic claims. He is regularly instructed on matters involving breach of duty, causation, condition, and prognosis, with a balanced claimant and defendant instruction profile. His medico-legal work frequently addresses complex and disputed neuropsychiatric presentations, including cases involving functional symptoms, diagnostic uncertainty, and symptom validity where clear structural pathology is absent. Clinically, Dr Silva is a Consultant Neuropsychiatrist at Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, where he leads the Chronic Fatigue Service and runs a general neuropsychiatry clinic. He is also an Honorary Associate Clinical Professor at the University of Birmingham, contributing to postgraduate teaching in clinical neuropsychiatry. His specialist interests include brain injury–related psychiatric syndromes, functional neurological and cognitive disorders, epilepsy, chronic fatigue syndrome / long-COVID, neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative conditions, all of which commonly present evidential challenges in litigation. Dr Silva examines claimants aged 16 and over, is based in Birmingham, and has completed formal medico-legal training through the Expert Witness Institute.
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