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Want to Improve Your Chances for Disability Benefits Approval?
It’s so hard to have health problems stop you from working. But at a time like this, it’s so important to focus on your own well-being, especially when it’s a mental health condition that disrupts your life.
You can get the kind of support you need to get through it: Social Security Disability benefits.
Disability benefits provide monthly income support and access to Medicare health coverage before the usual retirement age requirement.
But can you get disability for mental illness?
In fact, it’s quite common. Recent numbers from Social Security showed 2.4 million workers getting benefits for mental disorders. That was almost a third of total Social Security Disability recipients.
But applying for Social Security Disability for mental illness requires special care.
You can’t treat your claim like any other disability claim. With the right disability lawyer, you can get the personal attention you need. They can help you meet the requirements by proving your condition is severe enough that you can’t work.
At Baynetta M. Jordan, P.C., we stand up for people going through Social Security’s complicated disability process. As far as we’re concerned, Nobody Pushes West Texans Around™.
If mental illness has affected your livelihood, and you need financial relief, talk to us in Lubbock, Plainview, Levelland, Midland-Odessa and all across West Texas.
One Key to Qualifying for Disability Benefits: Showing Severe Ulcerative Colitis Symptoms
So you’ve heard about people getting disability benefits, but you think, “Does that apply to me?”
Mental health disorders are confusing on their own. Your situation isn’t exactly the same as everyone else. Do the Social Security Disability rules take into consideration what you’re going through?
The answer: Many mental health conditions are covered, likely including your own as long as it is severe enough to rule out working.
In fact, Social Security lists 11 different categories of mental disorders that can go into a claim for disability benefits.
These are some of the individual conditions, but certainly not all:
- Anxiety
- Autism spectrum disorders
- Bipolar disorder
- Depression
- Eating disorders
- Impulse control disorders
- Intellectual disorders
- Obsessive compulsive disorders (OCD)
- Panic disorders
- Personality disorders
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- Psychosis
- Somatic symptom disorders (anxiety about physical problems)
- Schizophrenia
Applying for disability benefits also means taking into account ALL of your health limitations, not just mental health.
It’s normal, for example, to experience mental stress if you have a major physical impairment.
If your mental health condition isn’t severe enough to rule out working and qualify you for benefits on its own, you may be able to get benefits because of a combination of health problems.
In Lubbock or Midland-Odessa, talk to an experienced disability lawyer to see how your particular case could qualify for assistance.
Medical Evidence You Need to Get Social Security Disability for Mental Illness
When you’re filling out an application for Social Security Disability for mental illness, or appealing a denial of benefits and looking to correct mistakes, you need to provide records, reports and statements from mental health care professionals that confirm your condition and the ways it limits you from handling a job.
Medical evidence is crucial to every disability benefits claim.
For mental disorders, Social Security looks for signs of how your illness affects four major areas of functioning at work:
- Understanding, remembering and applying information
- Interacting with others
- Concentrating and keeping up with tasks
- Managing your emotions and behavior in a work setting and processing changes
Social Security also says your medical evidence must show that your mental disorder is “serious and persistent,” which requires medical documentation of at least a two-year history with your disorder.
You can gather this evidence from health care providers who you have worked with, including physicians, therapists, counselors, psychiatrists and psychologists.
You can also provide non-medical evidence from people who you know personally. Friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, clergy and others can provide statements about how your health has changed your life and limited your activities.
This seems like a lot.
But you don’t have to do it alone.
Get a disability attorney to help you.
A lawyer who knows the Social Security system can make your process of getting benefits easier.
And getting benefits can make your life easier.
Get in touch with the Baynetta Jordan law firm.