Needing to fill out paperwork to prove you have a disability can feel unnecessary or even insulting if you have an injury or medical condition that has limited your ability to work or take care of yourself.
However, thoroughness and accuracy are critical to your success when you apply for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits.
The way that you complete your application and the evidence that you submit will have a direct impact on the success of your claim for benefits. Unfortunately, if you aren’t careful in how you fill out paperwork, especially your Disability Report Form, you could wind up rejected instead of approved for benefits, which will then necessitate taking further action to get the SSDI benefits you need.
Some people aren’t thorough enough with their Disability Report
The idea that you need to explain in detail how a severe medical condition affects your daily life may seem redundant, leading some people to gloss over their daily struggles. Given that they live with the condition, they assume that other people will know how a medical diagnosis like paralysis or epilepsy would affect daily life.
However, people can experience the same medical event or diagnosis with different levels of difficulty or complication. You could have a more severe version of a condition that many people can still work with or a less severe version of a typically fatal condition. All of the potential variations in presentation and symptoms require that the Social Security Administration consider each application based on details, not just diagnosis alone.
Your Disability Report Form gives you an opportunity to show exactly how debilitating and serious the condition is for you and how it affects your ability to provide for yourself. From describing the impact on your daily self-care to your pain levels, you can convey how severe your condition is.
Help with initial paperwork or appeals can improve your odds of success
Mistake or omissions on your initial application can significantly increase the amount of time it takes for you to get the benefits that you need. Getting help can potentially set you up to avoid delays, and getting help after a denied application could improve your chances of a successful appeal.