Winning Your Depression Case

 

First and up most you most understand that social security main concern is if you can work. Even though there has to be a medical reason for your enability to work. It is best not to focus on your medical condition, but rather how your condition limits your ability to work.

Depression and the medical listing of impairments.

To win a depression or mental listing there must be medical evidence consisting of clinical signs, symptoms, and/or laboratory or psychological test findings. Clinical signs can be medically demonstrated and reflect specific abnormalities of behavior, affect, thought, memory orientation, or contact with reality. Signs are typically assessed by a psychiatrist or psychologist and/or documented by psychological tests. Symptoms are complaints presented by the individual. Both symptoms and signs that are part of any diagnosed mental disorder must be considered in evaluating severity.

The severity of mental disorders for disability purposes is determined by the functional limitations imposed by the impairment.
Functional limitations are determined by descriptions of restrictions of activities of daily living; social functioning; concentration, persistence, or pace; and ability to tolerate increased mental demands associated with competitive work.

The presence of a mental disorder should be documented primarily on the basis of reports from individual treating sources such as psychiatrists and psychologists and facilities such as hospitals and clinics. Adequate descriptions of functional limitations must be obtained from these or other sources, which may include programs and facilities where the individual has been observed over a considerable period of time.

The SSA uses both medical and nonmedical sources to obtain detailed descriptions of the claimant’s activities of daily living, social functioning, concentration, persistence, and pace, or ability to tolerate increased mental demands (stress). Programs such as community mental health centers, day care centers, and sheltered workshops can provide this information. Others, including family members, who have knowledge of the claimant’s functioning, can also provide it.

If your disorder meets a listing you may vary well be considered disabled. listing for mental disorders.

The level of severity is met when have satifsfied these requirements

Assessing Mental Illness for the Purpose of SSDI and SSI
Simply being diagnosed with a mental illness is not enough to qualify for Social Security Disability Benefits.
The Social Security Administration takes several factors into consideration before granting Social Security
Disability Benefits of Supplemental Security Insurance Benefits. These factors include the following:

Activities of Daily Living
including adaptive activities such as cleaning, shopping, cooking, taking public transportation, paying bills,
maintaining a residence, caring appropriately for your grooming and hygiene, using telephones and directories,
and using a post office.
Social Functioning such as your capacity to interact independently, appropriately, effectively, and on a
sustained basis with other individuals
Concentration, Persistence, or Pace such as the ability to sustain focused
attention and concentration sufficiently long enough to permit the timely and appropriate completion of tasks
commonly found in work settings
Episodes of Decompensation including exacerbations or temporary increases
in symptoms or signs accompanied by a loss of adaptive functioning, as manifested by difficulties in performing
activities of daily living, maintaining social relationships, or maintaining concentration, persistence, or pace

Listing Level Severity
For your condition to be severe enough to meet this listing, you must have psychological or behavioral abnormalities.

The required level of severity is met when both A and B are satisfied, or when the requirements in C are satisfied.
Part A provides abnormalities that may be present in organic mental disorders.
Parts B and C discuss the functional severity of the disorder— that is, how it limits the claimant.

A Demonstration of a loss of specific thinking abilities or emotional changes and the medically documented persistence of at least one of the following:
1. Disorientation as to time and place.
2. Memory impairment, either short-term (involving an inability to learn new information), intermediate, or long-term
(involving an inability to remember information that was known sometime in the past).
3. Perceptual or thinking disturbances (for example, hallucinations, delusions).
4. Change in personality.
5. Disturbance in mood.
6. Emotional lability—such as explosive temper outbursts or sudden crying and impairment of impulse control.
7. Loss of measured intellectual ability of at least 15 IQ points from premorbid levels or an overall impairment
index that clearly falls within the severely impaired range on neuropsychological testing—such as the Luria-Nebraska or Halstead- Reitan.

B. Demonstration of a loss of specific thinking abilities or emotional changes resulting in at least two of the following:
1. Marked restriction of activities of daily living.
2. Marked difficulties in maintaining social functioning.
3. Marked difficulties in maintaining concentration, persistence, or pace.
4. Repeated episodes of decompensation, each of extended duration.

C Medically documented history of a chronic organic mental disorder lasting at least two years that has caused more than a minimal limitation of ability to do basic work activities, with symptoms or signs currently decreased by medication or psychosocial support and one of the following:
1. Repeated episodes of decompensation, each of extended duration; or
2. A residual disease process that has resulted in such marginal adjustment that even a minimal increase
in mental demands or change in the environment would be predicted to cause the individual to decompensate; or
3. A current history of inability to function outside a highly supportive living arrangement for one or more years
with signs that the individual will continue to need such an arrangement.

If you or someone you know is suffering from depression or a mental disorder click her for free case evaluation or call 1866-432-0382

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