Bipolar 2 From Inside and Out

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The Disability Tapdance

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Once I applied for disability for my bipolar disorder and I was turned down Then I took the process as far as I could with a lawyer and he eventually advised me to give it up too. Here’s my story.

I had gotten to the end of my proverbial rope and we had gotten to the end of our money. For over a year I had been sidelined by unremitting depression. There was nothing I could do and nothing my psychiatrist prescribed or my therapist said had helped. We had been living on my husband’s salary and what was in my 401K from when I had last been able to work.

At last my husband pointed out that we couldn’t hold out much longer. He encouraged me to apply for disability. I knew that there would be lots of hoops to jump through and that there was no guarantee of succeeding. But Dan was willing to go with me to the Federal Building and help me get through it. I certainly wasn’t capable of managing it on my own.

Between the two of us, we had looked up what sorts of documents I would need and had acquired them. I was glad we were able to do this because going back again and again for missing documents would have been a horror. I had my appointment with the intake person and went back home to wait.

There were more forms to come. My psychiatrist had to fill out a long one, of course, or write a letter, I don’t remember which. I had to pay him for his time and trouble in doing that but at that point it was just another step that needed taking.

The big step was the psychological interview where I had to perform my little song and dance and convince someone that I was truly disabled. Fortunately, the appointment was not downtown in the Federal Building but in a relatively nearby office building that I knew how to find. Then the hoop-jumping and tap dancing really began.

They tested my memory. They told convoluted stories and asked me questions about them such as the order in which things happened and why the characters did what they did. They were confusing.

They tested my spatial perception. They had me put together those cubes with triangles on them to match patterns they showed me. I still don’t know what that had to do with bipolar disorder.

Then came factual knowledge. I was good at that one. I admit I guessed when they asked me how big around the equator was. I knew the easy stuff like who wrote Tom Sawyer and such.

By the time they got to the word association test, I was very tired. First they gave a pair of words and asked what they had in common, easy ones like truck and train. Later they gave difficult pairs of words that seemed to have nothing in common, like acceptance and denial, but I was supposed to come up with a commonality anyway.

Finally, an interview. I remember the woman asking me if I knew what the saying, “What goes around, comes around” meant. I replied, “As you sow, so shall you reap” and she looked at me funny.

A seemingly endless time later my claim was denied and I got a lawyer to pursue it. By that time so much time had passed that I was coming out of the depression and was able to work a few hours a week. How much did I get paid per hour? he asked. “Thirty dollars,” I said, explaining that I could only work a very limited number of hours. It didn’t matter. As soon as I said thirty dollars the judge’s head would explode, evidently. Lawyer Joe recommended I drop the claim and I did. At least I was getting some work and some income even without disability.

It seemed that for me to get disability I would have had to be together enough not to need it, but sufficiently disabled that I would. Catch-22, as Joseph Heller said.

 

 

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Mental Health

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Shortchanged: Bipolar Disorder and Money

I don’t know any rich people with bipolar, aside from the celebrities who struggle with it and go public. There may be some out there – there must be, statistically – but I don’t know any of them. I’m relatively well off – home, car, most bills paid, work – but even I live paycheck to paycheck. And have lived no-paycheck-to-no-paycheck in the past.

Let’s face it, having bipolar is expensive. And not conducive to making money. Here are some of the hurdles that I’ve noticed.

Insurance. The biggie. Right now I have insurance and, thanks to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), it covers mental health conditions. My previous insurance, which was more expensive, and crappier, and came through my husband’s employment, did too, but not nearly as well.

So, I’m covered, but not all my doctors take my brand of insurance. Some of them will accept reduced fees (if you ask) or have a special self-pay rate. But even that doesn’t always help much. My previous psychiatrist charged me $95 and my current one $75 – and those are just for 15-minute med checks, not full 50-minute sessions. My therapist accepted $30 per for that, so I was lucky, but had no official insurance document stating that she had to give me that rate.

Medication. The other biggie. I am currently on four or five psychotropic medications, depending on how you count (and no, you don’t need to know what they are: http://wp.me/p4e9Hv-u1). One of them – you can probably guess which one – cost $800 per month when it was first prescribed to me. I got a coupon from GoodRx.com that brought it down to around $200 per month which was, if not exactly reasonable, more doable. Finally, a generic came out and the ACA kicked in, and I get the drug for $45 per month now. That would have seemed high at one time, but now sounds comparatively reasonable. But if you’re on a fixed income, watch out. Fixed income and no insurance, you’re screwed.

SSDI. Which brings us to the topic of Disability, the “safety net” that’s supposed to catch those of us who are so disabled by our mental (or physical) conditions that we’re unable to work. Good luck getting it. Most people who apply are rejected, sometimes more than once. Practically speaking, you need a lawyer to navigate the shoals for you, and one who works on contingency at that. The hoops and red tape are massive. If you’ve got depression, to pick just one example, cutting through and jumping through may be beyond your capabilities. You’d think they planned it that way, just to cut down on the number of claims they have to pay.

Mental illnesses are particularly difficult to get SSDI for. They’re “invisible illnesses,” not like blindness or paraplegia that one can’t help but notice. When and if you do get approved, the monthly payment is meager and fixed (see above), unless there is a cost-of-living raise which, given the current economy and political leadership, is increasingly unlikely.

Bipolarity. Then there’s the disease itself. Anyone with mania can probably tell you about the sometimes-ruinous spending sprees that accompany racing moods. Hell, I only get hypomania and I’ve got five custom-made dresses in my closet that I’ve never worn and now can’t because of weight gain from my psychotropics.

You’d think depression would not have much effect on your spending. But it does have a profound effect on your income. People with bipolar depression who can work part-time or from home are lucky. Others not so much. There was a period of several years when I was unable to work at all, and we ran through our savings and retirement accounts rapidly. My husband could still work, but one income quickly became insufficient to meet the bills. (Fortunately, my bipolar depression lifted enough that I’m now able to do part-time, at-home, freelance gigs, which are about as unstable as I am.)

Retirement. No IRAs left. No savings. That means Social Security, delayed as long as possible, and the aforementioned fixed income. Basically, I can never retire. I can’t afford to.

Frankly, I can’t see any of this changing anyways soon. Money trouble is just one of those things that you have to deal with along with your mental disorder. And there’s nothing like stress to make your symptoms worse.

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