Quote:
Originally Posted by r010159
Interesting. The biggest mistake I made was to not go back to work as quickly as possible. But this turned out to mean at least a few years before I was able to work. A couple years later, I crashed again and it has been hell on and off until recently.
Please tell me more about this mental health monitoring program. This may be a good or bad thing for me. In other words, while on this program, if I fail, will this mean I can quickly be placed on disability again?
So I have been on SSDI all this time for several years now. I want to go back to work and be totally responsible for my life again. But I do not understand the "hoops" I will have to jump through. Also I do not want to risk forfeiting my disability if in a year or two I have serious problems again. I think reapplying is a risky thing to do considering how many people are turned down for SSDI.
tucson
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You do not want the monitoring. It is awful. What happened with me was that I used hard drugs for 3 days while in a mixed state and suicidal. I ended up getting certified, and where I live if a nurse gets certified it gets reported to the college immediately, and they open a disciplinary file and suspend your license. I was on a stress leave when this happened, so I was not putting any patients at risk, but that didn't matter. Anyway, because I had done drugs for 3 days, they decided I was a drug addict, so made me go to rehab and they put me on a strict contract for mental health and addictions. I have random urine tests twice a month, biweekly meetings with a case manager, mandatory psychiatrist appointments and she has to sign off on my med compliance, and I'm required to prove attendance at twelve 12 step meetings per month. I am required to meet with an occ health nurse quarterly and she gets reports about my mental health from the head of the department I work for - these reports must be sent to the college. If I don't comply 100% I will be suspended again, and the college will publish me on their website as being disciplined. If I get hospitalized again, I am suspended. If the case manager feels my mood is unstable, I get suspended. My pdoc tried to write letters to advocate for me that this was unnecessary and bad for me. She was confident she could manage my care without all of this. But when she tried to advocate, the hospital tried to place me on extended leave, which means you remain certified after discharge and you can be brought back to hospital by police if you are noncompliant. The reason they wanted to do this was because if I was on extended leave I would be forced to see a different pdoc, so my pdoc that knows me well would have to transfer my case. I contacted mental health law, and the extended leave was canceled, but everything else remained.
Monitoring does not ensure that I would get disability if i need it. I would have to reapply and might or might not receive it. You do NOT want to be on the radar of your college, you do not want to be monitored. It's horrible. Do whatever you possibly can to avoid it, and find out if hospitalization would result in you being reported. If it would, I recommend not going to a hospital if at all possible.
Sorry for the long reply... just wanted to warn you about what can happen