Hi Zcoder:

You have my sympathies on your back problems. I'm a former sufferer myself, so I know how delibitating it can be. If you weren't suffering from the depression, anxiety, rage, etc., before the back problem (and the resulting lack of employment, money issues, etc.), then no doubt the one caused the other. Chronic pain and money problems would make anyone depressed.

I'm surprised social security is evaluating you for psych issues if you applied based on your back injury. I would have thought they would confine themselves to the issue before them, but I don't have that much experience with the process.

Lots of people hold unusual beliefs and lead balanced and productive lives. I doubt that your belief about aliens being involved with the government would qualify you for disability in and of itself, because it wouldn't necessarily prevent you from working. But I also don't think it would cause you to be involuntarily hospitalized either. I think that was your original question.

About the disability application: my son is on disability, so I can tell you what little I know about that. Most people are denied on the first application. My son was. We hired an attorney. The attorney gets 25% of the back social security payment. That is, if you're approved they pay you back to the day you applied. So, in my son's case, it took a year to be accepted, so he got a lump sum of 12 months worth of payments. The attorney got 25% of that. So my son didn't have to pay anything out of pocket.

I remember the attorney telling me that the medical record was the most important thing. My son's medical record was sketchy, so I called his case manager. She agreed with me that my son would not be able to support himself and should qualify for disability. She and her supervisor took a whole day to fill in the gaps in the record so that social security could get a true picture of how handicapped he was (and still is ). Once the attorney took that medical record to SS, they reversed their decision immediately and granted him benefits.

Good luck. It can be a lengthy process.