Anxiety and depression are the most common mental disorders. At least 30% of adults will, at some time during their lives, be affected by an anxiety disorder. Depression is equally as common with at least 17 million people living with depression symptoms that affect their ability to engage in normal daily activities, including affecting their ability to work.

If you cannot work and have been diagnosed with depression and anxiety, you may be eligible to have your short-term disability approved for anxiety or depression. A short-term disability insurance policy that you purchase on your own or as an employment benefit provided and paid for by your employer may offer benefits for disability caused by depression and anxiety.

How to get short-term disability approved for anxiety

A normal response to a stressful situation may be fear or nervousness, but someone with an anxiety disorder may experience emotional responses that cause them to withdraw and be unable to function. Symptoms that may indicate that you have an anxiety disorder include:

There are different types of anxiety disorders, including:

• 1). Generalized anxiety disorder
• 2). Separation anxiety disorder
• 3). Panic disorder
• 4). Social anxiety disorder

The first step to take to have short-term disability approved for benefits is to speak with a physician or mental health professional. You’ll need an evaluation and diagnosis of the condition along with a prescribed treatment plan. Anxiety disorders are treatable, but you must follow the treatment plan as prescribed by your medical professional.

Short-term disability for depression

Depression affects each person differently, but the lowing are some of the commonly experienced symptoms:

Symptoms of depression may be severe enough to interfere with your ability or desire to engage in normal day-to-day activities, including an inability to perform those activities required to do your job.

If you have any symptoms, the first step toward having short-term disability approved for depression is to be evaluated by a physician, such as a psychiatrist, or other health care professional who specializes in mental health disorders. You need a diagnosis and treatment plan in order to apply for and be approved for short-term disability for depression. The mental health professional treating you should also include in your medical record’s specific details about how your depression affects your ability to work.

Proving a claim for short-term disability insurance benefits

Whether you have an anxiety disorder, depression, or have both, the insurance company that issued the short-term disability policy will review your medical records. In addition to a treatment plan prescribed by the mental health professional who evaluated and diagnosed your condition, the records should include details about how it causes a disability that prevents you from working.

Keep in mind that short-term disability benefits are approved and paid according to the terms of the policy that you purchased or that your employer acquired for the benefit of you and other employees. Some policies may not pay for benefits for disabilities caused by mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety. Have a disability lawyer at London Eligibility review the terms of your short-term disability insurance policy to determine whether it pays benefits for depression or anxiety and the amount and duration of benefits if it does.

Another benefit of talking to a disability lawyer about your benefits claim is to determine whether you qualify for other forms for disability benefits, including benefits through long-term disability insurance policies or through Social Security disability. Social Security disability and many long-term disability plans do not pay benefits for physical or mental health impairments that are not expected to last for at least 12 months.

Talk to a short-term disability lawyer

If you have been diagnosed as having an anxiety disorder or depression that interferes with your ability to perform work-related activities, you should consider filing a claim to have the short-term disability approved for depression or for an anxiety disorder. A disability lawyer at London Eligibility will help you by reviewing the medical documentation supporting your claim to determine the options available for you to receive disability benefits. The lawyer also can assist you through the claim process, including challenging a denial of benefits.

Contact London Eligibility today to schedule a free disability benefits consultation with one of our disability lawyers. If it turns out that you have a long-term mental health condition expected to last for at least 12 months, we can help you submit an application for Social Security disability benefits.

When people are about to apply for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI or SSD) benefits, they want to know how much they will receive in monthly benefit payments. The answer is different for every individual. Every SSD benefit recipient’s benefit amount is determined by the taxable income they’ve earned over their working years.

In this blog post, we’ll explain how the amount of your SSD benefit payment will be determined, how the Social Security Administration (SSA) arrives at that figure. Uncertainty about important facts, especially involving financial issues, causes stress and anxiety. At London Eligibility, Attorney Scott London wants every client to be fully informed about all the factors affecting their SSD benefits claim.

Does Bipolar Get the Same Disability Benefit Payments as Physical Impairments?

Bipolar deserves and gets precisely the same disability benefit payments as a claimant would receive for a physical disability. In fact, your claimed disability has no effect whatsoever on the amount of disability benefits.

Under Social Security law and regulations, a claimant either has a qualified disability or the don’t. If the SSD applicant meets the criteria the Social Security Administration uses to determine the presence of a qualifying disability, then the nature of the disability does not affect the benefits to which that person is entitled.

Social Security defines all disabilities the same way:

“ . . . a medically determinable physical or mental impairment that lasts or is expected to last 12 months (or result in death) that prevents the person from performing substantial gainful activities.”

This definition applies to physical as well as mental impairments. There is no discount of your disability merely because it is a mental impairment instead of a physical one.

How Is Your Social Security Disability Benefit Amount Determined?

The amount of every SSD claimant’s disability benefit is determined by applying the same formula to each person’s individual history of earnings.

To determine a disability claimant’s monthly benefit amount for SSD, the government looks at all your reported taxable earnings since you began working. Then it takes the 35 highest earning years and puts them through a process called “indexing.”

Indexing is performed to adjust your earnings numbers upward to reflect the increase in the cost of living for each year of income being used in the benefit calculation. Once indexed, your 35 highest earning yearly incomes are added together. The resulting sum is divided by 35 to arrive at an average annual income. Then, the average annual income is divided by 12 to produce your Average Indexed Monthly Earnings, or AIME.

Your Average Indexed Monthly Earnings (AIME) is the figure that gets plugged into the formula shown below to ultimately provide your Primary Insurance Amount (PIA), the amount you will receive in monthly benefits.

The Formula Used to Determine Your Monthly Benefit Amount

To explain and illustrate the formula used by the Social Security Disability Program to identify your monthly benefit amount, we’ll use a hypothetical disabled worker named Sam. For our example, let’s say Sam’s Average Indexed Monthly Earnings (AIME) is $5,820.

The benefit amount determination formula is as follows:

• 1). Add 90% of the first $1,024 of Sam’s AIME = $921.60, plus
• 2). 32% of Sam’s AIME over $1,024 through $6,172 = $1,647.36, plus
• 3). 15% of Sam’s AIME over $6,172 = 0
• 4). $921.60 + $1,647.36 + 0 = $2,568.96
• 5). Round down to the next lowest $0.10 if not already a multiple of 10.

Final Primary Insurance Amount (monthly benefit) = $2,568.90

Qualifying for Social Security Disability Benefits with Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder is one of only a few impairments considered by the American Psychological Association to be a “Serious Persistent Mental Illness” (SMPI). The disorder varies in the degrees to which it impacts individuals’ lives, but the effects of the illness can cause a devastating impact on the daily functioning of those suffering from bipolar disorder.

Some bipolar sufferers can continue to work and function in the day-to-day employment environment. Their bipolar may be well controlled with medication or other treatment, or they may have infrequent episodes severe enough to disrupt their lives for limited periods. Others, however, suffer deeply and regularly from bipolar’s effects, anxiety levels so high they inhibit social interaction and leave the person unable to cope with a work environment. Some bipolar sufferers experience such profound depression that they can’t bring themselves to participate in daily life.

London Eligibility Wants to Help You Get Social Security Disability Benefits

London Eligibility is an organization devoted to helping people with disabilities of all kinds apply for and winning approval of the SSD and SSI benefits they deserve. Led by Attorney Scott London, London Eligibility is a team of lawyers and advocates specially trained to do the heavy lifting for people who want to file Social Security Disability benefits.