Disability process

Why do you ask?

Well because all of that plays a part in how fast your approved or not approved. Only a few people have responded so far and as you can see I am laying it all out so I can gauge some sort of comparison. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Well I first applied for SSD in October 2010, although with that I believe that about a year ago my lawyer sent me a letter in the mail saying that it was likely that we had pretty much run out of ways to get that for me. I think that what we are now trying to appeal is SSI for me which I believe I first applied for in late 2012.

I could be wrong, but attending school might count against you for disability. It may show you have the capacity to regularly drive, schedule, and partake in a classroom. I just know if a person is on unemployment or working they will be denied bc it shows they're willing and able to get a job. There was a member on here who was denied bc she regularly attended AA mtgs and something else maybe church or volunteering.

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While I think in some cases the lawyer wont do anything you can't do yourself....it was not the case with me. I think the lawyers help was necessary for getting my SSI and even with the attorney doing most of the paper-work, gathering medical records and putting together my case in such a way my condition could accurately be explained to the judge, I had a very hard time with the stress and at one point was considering hospitalization because I thought I might hurt myself because I couldn't take the stress/waiting.

So what I gather here is I should just apply for disability now even without a diagnosis or paper records. I should get an attorney to assist me with the process.

Is SSD the disability and SSI the retirement?

I would have absolutly no idea how to get through the sheer volume of paperwork, SS stating they never got the fax over and over, signing all the releases for Dr's paperwork which often can not be released directly to the patient talk about stupid, and endless red tape. SS will not in most all cases work with you.

Good Luck

I did some of my own paperwork because I figured I would do certain things better than the clerks at the law office. I believe I figured right, and that's why I got approved very quickly. I did that big long 13 page thing, talking about what my daily activities are and what happened on my jobs. I did an ace of a job on that.

However, some things are done better by the clerks in the law office. I agree totally with thickntired about rounding up medical records. I had a very long history of treatment. I had records in several different states. There were pdocs, regular docs, therapists, hospitals, and so on. I would not have wanted to take on the job of contacting all of them. Plus, like thick says, some things they won't send to patients. Plus, they can be slow to respond. If they get a request from a lawyer, I do believe they take it more seriously. Plus, the big law firms have a division of clerks who are experts at bugging medical providers to get the records needed. That, alone, is good enough reason to have a law firm represent you.

No. First you need a diagnosis AND a history of being treated for that diagnosis. If you don't have a diagnosis and a history of being on medication, there is no lawyer that will even take on your case. You couldn't even hire a lawyer, if you were a billionaire, because it is against the law for an attorney to bill you directly for working on getting you disability. All they can do is take a portion of your back payments when the disability is granted. (In my case, the lawyers didn't get a penny because there were no back payments, due to me getting approved right away. The law firm is okay with that. It doesn't happen often.)

There is SSDI and SSI.

SSDI is Social Security Disability Insurance. To get it, you have to have a work history of a certain length. It is basically getting your regular social security early in life because you have a medical condition that prevents you from holding a job. You continue getting it for as long as you are disabled.

SSI is Supplemental Security Income. That is given to extremely poor people. To get it you have to be either elderly (over 65,) or unable to work due to medical disability. Here are the people who get it: 1) Elderly poor people who never worked or who haven't worked long enough to get regular social security. 2) People who can't work, due to medical disability, and who never worked, or who haven't worked long enough to get SSDI. 3) People who already collect regular social security or SSDI and get such a small check that they are considered poor enough to qualify for additional income from the Social Security Administration.

When you apply to the Social Security Administration because you believe you are disabled, they will automatically consider you to be applying for both SSDI and SSI.

Besides SSDI and SSI, there is regular old Social Security that people who are not disabled get when they retire at the usual age.

You have a decent case, but you have a huge problem because you have not established the right "paper trail" of treatment. It is obvious to me that you are seriously depressed. People with less mental impairment than you get approved for disability all the time. But you will get turned down because you haven't laid the foundation. You need to see a psychiatrist. Social Security pays much more attention to a psychiatrist than to a psychologist. They won't consider you to have a mental illness, if they don't see where you have been on psych medication. If you feel depressed, as you obviously do, then you have a right to be tried on an antidepressant mediation. Your regular doctor can order that. If it does't clear up your depression, you have a right to ask to see a psychiatrist.

If you've been fired from 40 jobs, it is very likely that your psychiatric condition is complicated and involves much more than depression. You need a shrink to figure all that out. The regular doctor can't and won't. The pdoc may eventually give you a bunch of psych diagnoses. Social Security won't care much about your application, until you've been given treatment for your psych issues and it turns out that the treatment doesn't fix you up to where you can work and hold a job.

Having physical problems will help your claim. Get the back problem diagnosed.

Stick with the psychologist, too. That psychologist doesn't think that your whole problem is that you worked for a bunch of jerks. Like you say, "there must be more to it." Social Security doesn't approve claims based on somebody losing jobs due to working for jerks. You have to convince them that you lost jobs because you have a lot of trouble coping in the workplace due to you being both physically and mentally unwell. That doesn't make you a bad person. The smarter you are, the harder it is to get approved, so it doesn't help you for your psychologist to be evaluating you as smart.

Go ahead and call some of those disability law firms that you see on TV. They'll probably tell you to call them back after you get processed in by the psychologist and get on some psych medication. Tell the law firm about your back and knees. If your are very over-weight, that will help your claim.

Good luck.

Rose76- if that is the case than I may stand a better chance to get SSI.

RTerroni,

It is not any easier to get SSI, than to get SSDI. If you are not yet 65, you can only get SSI if you are disabled. That means you would have to be just as disabled to get SSI, as you would need to be to get SSDI.

There is one sense in which you might be right. If you haven't worked long enough to qualify for SSDI, then you would be limited to just SSI. There is no work requirement for getting SSI. It is based on how poor you are. But you do have to be either elderly, or disabled.

Well I am very poor, and really have no steady income.

That alone will not get you anything. Social security will only help you, if you are disabled. You need a good paper trail of having been diagnosed with some kind of illness, physical and/or mental and of getting treated for it.

The way I understand it's based on if you are disabled and poor due to not being able to work due to the condition. Non-disabled people over 65 can get on it? never heard of that thought it was just for people with disabilities who haven't worked enough for SSDI.

It is possible to get the paper trail/diagnoses and such while going through the SSI process. Of course it is good to have a paper trail initially. But if one does not since the process takes so long it is certainly plausible to develop more of a paper trail during the process....you are allowed to submit any new medical evidence you did not initially submit to them at any time during your case.

I hardly had a paper trail before applying and most of it I ended up with during the process of applying because I found a local mental health center I could afford the costs at since they had very low co-pays for low income people so went to therapy, saw someone who could prescribe meds and ended up with more diagnoses on paper and also saw a neuropsychologist.

I guess what I am saying is the process takes so long it wouldn't make much sense to make sure to develop a very intricate long paper trail and then apply seems to make more sense to do both at once...apply and collect as much medical evidence you can to shorten the amount of time it might take to get on it.

My neighbor is an elderly housewife who never worked (except under the table.) She was not disabled. She has been getting SSI since she was 65. She was never married. Her man left her. She has nothing. So she gets it.

"Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is a United States government program that provides stipends to low-income people who are either aged (65 or older), blind, or disabled." From: Supplemental Security Income - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Notice the "either" and the "or." It's a good question.

For the purposes of this program, being over age 65 is the same as being disabled. You are considered too old to be expected to work. Makes sense when you think about it. SSI has kept a lot of elderly females off the streets. (though it's not just for them.) In a lot of states, if you get SSI, which is federal, the state also kicks in a few extra bucks on top of this. (Especially true in rich states.)

In most states, anyone who gets SSI automatically gets Medicaid.

In all states, anyone who gets SSI will get Medicare 2 years after their SSI payments start, or at age 65, whichever comes first.

Most people on SSI end up getting both Medicaid and Medicare.

You might find that all you've done is to shorten the amount of time it takes to get a denial. Then the burden of proof is on you to convince SSA that the first decision they made was wrong. They are going to look at everything you submit the second time and compare it with everything you submitted the first time, and that can get you into trouble.

My strong advice is to get diagnosed and into some treatment before you submit a claim. Even then, you will very likely get a denial (quickly) because they will say that they are hoping that your treatment is effective and enables you to succeed in the workforce. (They are not going to hold your application, while they wait and see. They will deny you and leave it to you to apply all over again.) The approach you are suggesting is most likely to succeed, if you have a condition that is dramatically, and obviously, profoundly disabling. I'm thinking of something like dementia, with obvious cognitive impairment. That might be in someone who has early onset Alzheimer's who suddenly presents as too decompensated to cope, but has gone undiagnosed prior to that.

Your approach might also have a better chance if, though there is no preceding history of medical treatment, there has been a history of failing miserably on job after job after job because of a flaming personality disorder that left you with such impaired judgement that you never even thought there was anything wrong with you. Such a person might be socially inappropriate to a grotesque degree. (Someone close to me got approved rather quickly on that basis.)

Let me add that this would be a good question to ask a lawyer, who might differ with me. My suspicion, though, is that many lawyers are not going to be this candid with you about some of these issues.

If you go to YouTube.com and type in Getting SSDI, you can bring up lots and lots of videos of attorneys explaining some of the ins and outs of the process. These are well worth watching. I credit these videos with the quick success I had. From these recorded talks, I learned exactly what the SSA needs to see in that 13 page thing they have you fill out.

A friend was in your predicament. She was approved on a pdoc stating anxiety and depression. But when she received an inheritance after her Mom died they kicked her off.

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Some ppl gain medicade from their spouse if they were married 10 yrs.

I think everyone on this thread should give a huge Thank You to Rose76 for all of the time she has spent and excellent advice given.

We ♥ you Rose!!!

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Getting SSI does depend on being very poor. If you're getting SSI, they do review your financial status on a regular basis, at least yearly. A sizable inheritance certainly could get a person kicked off SSI.

SSDI, on the other hand, is granted to a disabled person who has worked long enough to qualify. A billionaire can get SSDI just as readily as a poor person. Your eligibility for SSDI has absolutely nothing to do with your financial status. Once you get SSDI, you will never lose it due to inheriting a lot of money. The same is true for Medicare. (You can only lose SSDI by regaining your health to where you could return to work, and the SSA discovers that.) Qualifying for Medicare has nothing to do with how much or how little money you have. Medicaid, on the other hand, is only for the poor.

I don't know about that.

thickntired, Thank you. I'm glad if anyone has benefited from what I've shared. Before applying for SSDI, I did a lot of research, which I think is why I successfully got through the whole process in only 3 months. I had a lot of misunderstanding about things myself, until I was forced to look into things.

I've seen very deserving people fail to get benefits they should have gotten due to not understanding what it takes to be successful in a claim. This is an undertaking, in which Knowledge is power.