If you do decide to try for disability you start the process online on the social security website. (If I remember this correctly) You do an initial short form, then there is a phone or in person interview and then you do a more detailed form that has all the dr's you've seen in the past and releases for their notes, hospital notes, etc. You fill out information about past jobs and why you left. That form has a lot of information. Then a couple weeks pass and you get a form asking you to describe every single thing you can or cannot do. The key to success is to emphasize what you cannot do and explain that when you are able to do it this is because you have help, it takes all your energy for 3 days, you have to take significant doses of sedatives, etc. You don't get long to do this form which is hard with mental illness. At the same time your providers will get similar forms where they assess what you are able to do and how you function on everything. That goes in and they start requesting all of your medical records (you sign a release) and generally it takes quite a while for them to review everything and make a determination. I think most people are initially denied and have to appeal. At that point most people bring an attorney in. I don't know the appeal part at all; there is a program that selects people who are so impaired that there is no doubt that they will be approved and they do not do most of the paperwork on those cases, they just approve them. I was the first mental health case my county had seen approved through that program. It's rare and I don't know why I happened to be fortunate enough to get approved that way (it was partly the documentation of my doctors' which were preparing for this moment for years and it was probably partly that I spent my career filling out Medicare/Medicaid paperwork and knew how to make the answers what they wanted), but I was and so I got benefits 3 months after applying. I am very aware of how much of a gift that was and how many other people are just as deserving but have to wait and I very much wish it were different. I know what would have happened to me if I'd had to wait years and it would have been ugly.

But that's the basic process.