| Guest | Date: Saturday, 2014-06-07, 10:18 PM | Message # 16 |
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Group: GUESTS
| I'm going to give you my standard asnwer to this question that I wrote up:You should contact your county social services offices and see what help may be available. I know in my area, a guy needed SSI, and a local church plus general welfare helped pay his bills until the social workers could get his SSI paperwork thru. He has schizophrenia or something, I'm not sure (don't like him, so I don't ask.) The mental health problem has to be very severe, or if you have another condition like low vision or hearing loss, the two disabilities together may be very severe. You have to be unable to work at ANY job where you could earn about $800 a month or more. So if you can flip burgers, you don't qualify. Not being able to work consistently is where many disabilities fit in. It's not realistic to hold a job if you will miss work 50 days a year, obviously. Some states have a program you pay into while you work that will pay for short term disability (that's what it's called, there is short term and long term disability). I know California had that, I used that program. I am pretty sure that Massachusetts does too. You can look at pay stubs and see if there is some state plan you have been paying into. Your employer may have been offering short term and long term disability. Long term disability covers mental illnesses only 2 years, usually (discrimination) but that will get you over to SSI/SSA. In CA and Arkansas, the more genetically based mental illnesses may be covered the same as any other illness tho. Get the book Social Security Disability from Nolo Press, at nolo.com, or see if you can get it at your library (maybe even through an interlibrary loan?) It will give you a lot of background on how to apply, what criteria are used, and how to fill out the forms. You have to be profoundly disabled to get disability, and if you are relatively young and educated, it will be harder. But if you really can't hold down a job, and you can document that, you should get it eventually. You will almost certainly be rejected the first time, and the process takes awhile, so somehow you have to manage your finances in the meantime.Keep in mind that once you go on disability, you will never get off of it, no one does. You will be in poverty the rest of your life unless you marry out of it or a miracle cures you. The ways the rules are make you dependent on the system, so keep that in mind when you are deciding if you want to do this. A lot of people have no choice, because they can't work at all, or they can't keep a job with insurance to get their pills. but it's still humiliating in America to have no job-people always ask when you are being introduced, Oh hello, what do YOU do for a living? which ends up being a very nosy question without meaning to. If you can get supportive help from social services (in my state, they will pay for support groups and a social worker to visit and help with paperwork) or tweak your meds some more, or from a local consumer group (google the words consumer, mental, and your state. Consumer=person getting mental health services) then maybe you won't have to go on disability.I'm on SSA myself, and need the Medicare, so I'm not being judgmental, I just want you to know what you're getting into. For me, there was no other way. I know a lot of people in the same boat. **Get the book I recommended, it will give you all the legal and inside information to see if you qualify.**All the best to you! I hope you feel better soon!
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