Bipolar Me

I applied for disability once when I had been suffering from extreme depression, a symptom of my bipolar 2 disorder, for approximately three years. I couldn’t work. Without my income, my husband and I were running out of money and looking for financial assistance.

Here’s what I learned about SSDI from that experience and subsequent research, and I’d like to share it with you.

First, SSDI covers people with a number of conditions: neurocognitive disorders; schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders; depressive, bipolar, and related disorders; intellectual disorders; anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders; somatic symptom and related disorders; personality and impulse-control disorders; autism spectrum disorder; neurodevelopmental disorders; eating disorders; and trauma- and stressor-related disorders.

Lots of people have one or more of those conditions. My diagnosis was bipolar 2 with anxiety. After I made my application and jumped through all the necessary hoops, I was denied. Here’s a look at the most common reasons that claims are denied.

You may have incomplete documentation or it may be unorganized and lacking in detail. I had plenty of documentation from my psychiatrist, whom I’d been seeing for years. I should mention that getting those documents from him so I could submit them cost quite a bit. I understood this. My doctor and his office had a lot to do in order to go through my copious files and organize and copy them. (It was only then that I discovered that I was diagnosed not only with bipolar 2 but with anxiety.)

No mental health record. You may have started your psychiatric journey with your primary care physician. They may have been the first one to prescribe you a medication such as an antidepressant. They probably didn’t record when your problem began, a formal diagnosis, or what treatment you required aside from the medication. The PCP generally doesn’t record how your condition affects your daily life as well as cognitive functions like memory and concentration.

Noncompliance with treatment. If you haven’t followed your doctor’s orders such as taking your medication as prescribed, attending regular sessions, or doing “homework” that your therapist may have assigned, it will count against you.

Your disability hasn’t gone on long enough. The longer your condition has affected you, the more likely you are to receive disability. In my case, I had been diagnosed with bipolar for many years, but was only severely impaired for a few years when I applied.

Employment work history. This means not just your present job, but any job you’ve held. They use this to determine whether you can still work at some job, in which case, your application will most likely be turned down.

Question of malingering. The Social Security people are—not to say eager—but on the alert for any sign that you’re not really disabled. As part of this, they put you through psychological tests to assess your concentration, memory, and other cognitive functions.

Here are some of the tests you can expect.

Intelligence tests. I don’t know why this is even a factor, but for some reason you could be tested. (IQ really has nothing to do with disability.) These tests won’t be based on your academic achievement, just your IQ.

Standardized tests of adaptive functioning, plus conceptual, social, and practical skills to function in your daily life.

Neuropsychological batteries and memory tests. Neuropsychological batteries include tests of attention and concentration; executive functions (planning, organization, problem-solving, and decision-making); language; visual-spatial skills; motor function; and intellectual functioning.

I still remember taking a number of these tests. There was the one where I heard a story and answered questions about it: Did Ed take the umbrella or the raincoat? Did he check the weather in the paper or on the TV? Did he put on the raincoat before or after he left the building? I had to put blocks together to match a pattern. I had to take two words and say what was similar or different about them. (One pair was “acceptance” and “avoidance.”) I had to answer as many factual questions as I could, of increasing difficulty. I had to say what the phrase “What goes around, comes around” means.

There may also be personality measures, symptom validity tests, performance validity tests, and screening tests (to determine whether more tests are needed).

The tests, as you can imagine, took hours and were exhausting. I did my best on them. Maybe I did too well. After all that and more waiting, my claim was denied. I hired a disability rights lawyer, who advised me to drop the claim, saying that I was unlikely to be judged eligible. By that time I had a work-from-home job as a subcontractor for an educational video firm. When I told the lawyer how much I made per hour, he said the judge’s head would explode. It wasn’t steady, full-time work, but the hourly rate was significant.

By that time, however, I had pulled out of the years of depression and didn’t feel like pursuing the claim any further. Since that time, I’ve never considered going through it all again.

And I hope I never have to.