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Everything about having post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is hard. It’s hard to endure it. It’s hard to get treatment for it. It’s hard to explain it to others.
You might think it’s out of the question to expect you could get financial assistance because you have PTSD.
But if your case of PTSD makes it impossible to work, you can.
Social Security Disability benefits provide monthly checks to people who must stop working because of serious health problems.
Does PTSD qualify for disability benefits? Mental health problems do count. In fact, numbers from Social Security show that a full quarter of workers who receive disability benefits have mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression and PTSD.
Of course, they don’t make it easy to apply for disability benefits. Social Security denies most people and makes them appeal.
Proving a PTSD case comes with particular challenges. You’ve got to get across to claims administrators how an intensely disturbing event—witnessing or experiencing violence, accidents, disasters, crimes—has changed you.
If you’re in West Texas, that’s a task the disability attorney team at Baynetta M. Jordan, P.C., is ready to take on for you.
We’ve helped thousands of West Texans for over three decades.
We step in to make sure that, “Nobody Pushes West Texans Around™.”
How Does Social Security Disability View PTSD?
The Social Security Administration (SSA) names post-traumatic stress disorder as a condition that is covered under its listing of impairments that qualify for Social Security Disability benefits.
Social Security puts PTSD in the category of “trauma and stressor” disorders on its impairments list.
To prove your claim for disability benefits for PTSD, the government says you must document these experiences:
- Your exposure to harmful events, such as violence, serious injury, a death—or threats of those traumas
- Later re-living those events through disturbing memories, flashbacks or dreams
- A new tendency to avoid being reminded of the trauma
- Mood and behavior disturbances
- Sharply increased reactions to the world around you, such as intensified startling and sleep problems
You also must show noticeable limitation in one of these areas, or an extreme limitation in two of them:
- Processing information
- Interacting with other people
- Focusing and staying on a task
- Managing change, stress, and your daily life
And your PTSD-related mental health problems must have lasted for at least two years, during which you underwent treatment, therapy and other efforts that help your symptoms—but you still have minimal ability to process change and handle new demands placed on you.
If you’re wondering does PTSD qualify for disability benefits in your particular case, talk to the Texas disability lawyers at Baynetta M. Jordan, P.C., for an initial consultation on your situation.
This conversation comes with no costs or obligations.
Evidence You Need to Qualify for Disability with PTSD
Because of the fear that people might take advantage of the Social Security Disability system, thousands of rules have been added over the years requiring you to prove your claim using evidence.
Social Security says it wants “objective medical evidence,” meaning confirmation of your symptoms that goes beyond your own word. For post-traumatic stress disorder, this evidence can come from professionals including doctors, psychologists, social workers and other health care providers.
Evidence like this:
- Record of your diagnosis
- Your medical and psychological history
- Psychological testing results
- Reports from physical and mental exams
- Medical imaging
- Laboratory results
- Details of medications you take and how they work
- Description of therapy you receive and your results
- Side effects of prescriptions and other treatments
- A history of changes in your treatment over time
- Observations from health care providers about your visits
- Observations of changes in your senses, movement and speech
- How long health professionals think your symptoms will last
Your own reports of what you experience are absolutely a part of your disability benefits claim, too, but Social Security will be looking at how reports from others match up.
Care providers aren’t the only people Social Security may listen to, though they are important. You can also submit statements from people who personally know you—family, friends, neighbors, teachers, bosses and more—explaining how they’ve seen what your PTSD does to your daily life.
This is a time when you need—and you deserve—support.
A major purpose of a disability attorney is to help you gather all of this evidence and documentation and build your claim, so that’s one area of stress you can reduce. You always pay no attorney fee until you win benefits.
If you’re struggling with PTSD in Lubbock, Plainview, Levelland, Midland-Odessa, or anywhere else in West Texas, talk to our Social Security Disability law firm.
We’re here to help you get on better footing to take care of yourself and move forward with your life.