PTSD Disability Lawyer in California

PTSD Disability Lawyer

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a severe mental health condition triggered by experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event. It has profound effects on an individual’s daily life, often resulting in significant impairments affecting a person’s ability to perform essential work activities.

If PTSD affects your ability to earn a living, you need not struggle through financial hardship. The disability lawyers at Sackett Law have made it possible for people throughout the United States to obtain disability benefits for PTSD through the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) programs of the Social Security Administration.

SSDI and SSI can provide you with a monthly cash payment and medical insurance to ease the financial burden caused by the effect PTSD symptoms impose on your life. You have too much at stake not to want a top-notch disability lawyer on your side, fighting to get you the benefits you deserve and need.

Is PTSD a disability?

PTSD is a mental health condition causing a broad range of symptoms that typically fall into the following categories:

• Intrusive memories: Recurrent, unwanted, distressing memories of the traumatic event. There may be flashbacks, severe emotional distress, or physical reactions to reminders of the trauma a person experienced or witnessed.
• Avoidance: Efforts to avoid thinking or talking about the traumatic event and avoiding places, activities, or people that may trigger memories of the trauma.
• Negative changes in thoughts and Mood: Negative thoughts about oneself or others, feelings of hopelessness, memory deficiencies, difficulty maintaining close relationships, and a lack of interest in activities once enjoyed.
• Changes in physical and emotional reactions: Being easily startled or frightened, always being on guard and anticipating danger, self-destructive behavior, trouble sleeping, and irritability.

PTSD that substantially limits one or more major life activities is recognized by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as a disability subject to the law's protections. If the symptoms of PTSD become debilitating and impair a person’s ability to do the activities required to perform their jobs, a person also may be eligible for SSDI and SSI benefits.

Social Security disability benefit programs: SSDI and SSI

Although they seek to accomplish the same goal of providing monthly income and medical benefits to people with qualifying disabilities who cannot work, SSDI and SSI are distinctly different programs. SSI is a program based on need, so you cannot have more than little or no income, and the value of resources or assets available to you cannot exceed $2,000. Resources for eligible couples may not exceed $3,000.

The eligibility requirements for SSDI disability benefits differ significantly from those of the SSI program. SSDI is an entitlement program, so you must have worked and contributed to the Social Security retirement and disability system through the payroll taxes paid on your earnings.

The definition of disability used to determine whether you qualify for disability benefits is the same for adults applying to SSI or SSDI. You must document with medical evidence the existence of a physical or mental impairment that prevents you from doing work-related activities. Benefits are not available for partial or temporary disabilities, so the impairment or combination of impairments must last or be expected to last for at least 12 months or be expected to result in death.

Is PTSD a mental disability?

The Social Security Administration created a listing of impairments, commonly called the Blue Book, for its claims examiners at the Disability Determination Services to use. Impairments that match or are the functional equivalent of those in the listing are considered severe enough to qualify for disability benefits.

Section 12.15 of the Blue Book contains the listing for PTSD. The criteria you must meet to qualify for benefits must be in your medical records and include documentation of the following:

• Exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or violence.
• Subsequent involuntary re-experiencing of the traumatic event, such as intrusive memories, flashbacks, or nightmares.
• Avoidance of external reminders of the event.
• Disturbance in mood and behavior, such as increased irritability, anger, or aggression.
• Markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities.
• Persistent negative emotional states, such as fear, anger, guilt, or shame.

The medical records also must document the presence of functional limitations. The listing of impairments for PTSD requires the records to show an extreme limitation of one or a marked limitation of two of the following:

• Understanding, remembering, or applying information.
• Interacting with others.
• Concentrating, persisting, or maintaining pace.
• Adapting or managing oneself.

Disability lawyers at Sackett Law know the requirements that must be met to prove the presence of a PTSD disability. They understand the importance of medical documentation and work with your doctors to ensure your records include the following:

• Patient history.
• Psychological evaluations.
• Treatment recommendations and history of patient compliance.

The records must document how PTSD affects your ability to function daily and particularly how it affects your ability to function in your workplace. Statements from your employer and coworkers can be helpful to prove PTSD prevents you from doing work-related activities.

You’re not alone. Sackett Law fights for you

If you do not meet the listing criteria, that does not mean your claim will be denied. You can qualify for disability with PTSD by proving that you cannot do work you did in the past and other types of work available in the national economy.

The main thing to remember is that you are not in this alone. Sackett Law, the premier disability lawyers in California and throughout the United States, will be there with you through every step of the process, including appealing a denial of PTSD disability benefits. Contact us today to learn more about PTSD and what we can do for you.