Kissimmee residents who have suffered under a mental condition, ranging from depression to schizophrenia to bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses, know how serious and debilitating these conditions can be. If serious enough, they can keep a person out of the workforce and, at times, barely able to function.
It is no surprise, therefore, that many Floridians with mental disorders apply for Social Security Disability benefits, simply because they are not able to support themselves and need the help. However, one cannot easily see that a person with a mental illness is even sick at all, much less too sick to maintain gainful employment and thus disabled.
Therefore, the evidence a person applying for disability on the basis of a mental condition needs to be detailed, accurate and carefully prepared.
For starters, the Social Security Administration is obviously going to review the medical documentation a person presents in order to confirm the person has actually being diagnosed with a qualifying mental condition.
However, and more importantly, the records also need to show how the condition keeps a person from being able to work, whether due to characteristics like the inability to pay attention and process even simple instructions or the inability to maintain minimum standards of social behavior at work.
The Administration typically looks for “episodes of decompensation,” which is a fancy way of saying the Administration wants to see some proof that a person’s mental health condition habitually makes it such that the person can no longer function in the professional environment even though he or she could at one time. In other words, the condition has to in some way make things worse for its victim.
Even without pronounced episodes of compensation, a person can still get disability benefits for a mental condition, although in such cases, it is often because the person suffers from other physical ailments as well which, collectively, make it practically impossible for a person to hold a job.
