SSDRC

Filing an Application for Disability Benefits

Social Security Disability List of Impairments

Social Security Disability and SSI Back pay

Social Security Disability Status

SSI Disability Benefits

Social Security Disability and SSI Requirements

Social Security, SSI, and Mental Disability

How Long Does It Take To Get Disability Benefits?

Qualifying: What do you Need to Prove to Qualify for Disability?

Facts about Behcet's disease and Filing for Disability

1) Behcet’s syndrome is also known as silk road disease, Morbus Behçet, and Behçet's disease.

2) Behcet’s syndrome is caused by a disturbance in the immune system, leading to inflammation in the body that affects blood vessels. Symptoms may include skin rashes and lesions, mouth sores, eye inflammation, abdominal pain, headaches, poor balance, diarrhea, and genital sores. The symptoms usually seem unrelated, and can come and go without notice.

3) Although more males are affected by the disease worldwide, more females are affected by Behcet’s syndrome in the United States. About 20,000 Americans have been diagnosed with Behcet’s syndrome.

4) Risk factors for Behcet’s include being male, being in your 20s, 30s and 40s, having certain genes, and living in the Middle East and Asia. Although the cause is unknown, it is thought that it is caused by a combination of environmental factors (including environmental toxins) and genetics.

5) There is no cure for Behcet’s syndrome, although medications can treat symptoms individually. Left untreated, Behcet’s syndrome may cause blindness.

6) The condition of Behcet’s syndrome is determined by a diagnosis of exclusion; it is not a condition with a well defined cause or origin, much like sarcoidosis, Tolosa-Hunt syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, and Bell’s Palsy. Behcet’s cannot be diagnosed by examination or testing. Diagnosis is only determined by elimination of other possible causes for symptoms.

7) Many times treatment will include mouth rinses for mouth sores, creams and ointments for skin disturbances, and eye drops that relieve eye pain and inflammation. Severe cases of Behcet’s include treatments such as corticosteroids, immunosuppressive drugs, and immune system regulators.

Can you qualify for disability benefits with this condition?

Whether or not you qualify for disability and, as a result, are approved for disability benefits will depend entirely on the information obtained from your medical records. This includes whatever statements may have been obtained from your treating physician (a doctor who has a history of treating your condition and is, therefore, qualified to comment as to your condition and prognosis).

It will also depend on the information obtained from your vocational, or work, history if you are an adult, or academic records if you are a minor-age child. The important thing to keep in mind is that the social security administration does not award benefits based on simply having a condition, but, instead, will base an approval or denial on the extent to which a condition causes functional limitations. Functional limitations can be great enough to make work activity not possible (or, for a child, make it impossible to engage in age-appropriate activities).

Why are so many disability cases lost at the disability application and reconsideration appeal levels?

Speaking as a former Disability Claims Examiner, I can state that there are several reasons:

1) Social Security makes no attempt to obtain a statement from a claimant's treating physician. By contrast, at the hearing level, a claimant and his or her disability attorney will generally obtain and present this type of statement to a judge;

2) Prior to the hearing level, a claimant will not have the opportunity to explain how their condition limits them, nor will their attorney or representative have the opportunity to make a presentation based on the evidence of the case. At the hearing level, of course, this is exactly what happens. And a number of disability representatives will also take such steps even earlier, at the reconsideration appeal level;

3) Disability judges, unlike disability examiners who decides cases at the first two levels of the system, can make independent decisions without being overturned by immediate supervisors--which happens frequently.