Get Ahead in Your Personal Injury Case

When Your Emotional Disability Is The Result Of Recent Trauma: Why It's Hard To Get Disability (And Why You Need To File Anyhow)

7 August 2016 by Kenneth Pierce

A traumatic event or serious personal loss, like the death of a close relative, can send a lot of people spiraling into a depression. Some people even develop anxiety, panic attacks, or symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that becomes disabling as a result. However, even if you develop any of these problems as a reaction to a recent traumatic event, you may have some difficulty convincing Social Security to grant you disability benefits. This is what you should understand about how SSA views your condition and what you should do.

Why is it hard to qualify for Social Security based on a mental condition that was caused by recent trauma?

Social Security's definition of disability is very strict. You have to be unable to do any past type of work, unable to adjust to other types of work because of your various limitations (physical or mental), and not expected to recover within a year's time (or die from the condition). It's this long-term view of things that makes it difficult to qualify for benefits based on depression, anxiety, or PTSD after a recent trauma or loss. While Social Security may agree that your mental condition makes you entirely unable to work, it may still not be enough to qualify you for benefits because they may consider your condition to be primarily reactive. In other words, since the condition didn't exist prior to the recent trauma, there's no reason to assume that you won't recover within a year's time—until, of course, you don't.

If your condition has already persisted for a full year after the traumatic event that started everything, you may find it easier to qualify for benefits, since you'll already have exceeded the time limit required by SSA.

Is there any point in filing for disability benefits before a year has passed since the traumatic event?

You should absolutely still file for disability benefits, even if it hasn't been a full year since the trauma that started your mood disorder and disability. The date that you make a written statement of your intent to file for disability benefits is called your "protective filing date" with SSA. That date is important because it can preserve your eligibility for disability by extending your "insurance" with Social Security. Workers are only insured through a certain date of eligibility based on their work and earnings over time. The date through which your disability insurance is valid varies greatly from person to person and is something that can be calculated through your Social Security office. It can also protect your right to certain other types of benefits, like Supplemental Security Income.

Even if you aren't approved right away for disability benefits, your protective filing date ultimately controls the date that your disability benefits can be paid retroactively. If your claim is delayed while the calendar ticks by to that first-year anniversary of the trauma and resulting condition, you can still receive payment for some of the time that has passed.

In addition, filing early allows you to build a case file that's complete and shows the progression of your disorder. Once a year is passed, you won't have to wait while Social Security collects records of your treatment from various sources. That could make getting approved on appeal relatively quicker, even if you were denied when you first filed.

If you're concerned that you haven't been disabled "long enough" to collect Social Security because the event that triggered your mental condition and disability was fairly recent, talk to a disability attorney in your area about the situation. Attorneys like Horn & Kelley, PC Attorneys at Law can help with more information.

Share

Search