Bipolar Disorder
How To Win a Bipolar Disability Case in Michigan
With bipolar disorder, it can seem like anxiety, depression, guilt and agitation have taken over your life.
You may find yourself so depressed that you can’t get out of bed. Other days, you may experience manic episodes that cause you to make rash decisions.
If you miss too much work, your job and financial well-being are at risk. But a mental health condition like bipolar disorder is not your fault.
Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits exist to help people like you who can’t work because of health problems both physical and mental. Benefits include monthly checks and Medicare health coverage to ease your financial burden and allow you to repair your life.
Proving you deserve benefits can be difficult with a condition like bipolar. On the outside, you may appear to others just like anyone in perfect health. Make this easy on yourself by getting an experienced lawyer to help you win disability income.
Levine Benjamin Law Firm has helped more than 80,000 people win benefits in Toledo, Traverse City and across Michigan and Ohio.
From applying to appealing, we help you every step of the way.
What would you like to do?
Do I Qualify for Disability for Bipolar Disorder?
When you’re suffering from bipolar disorder, you might feel alone. But you’re not. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, an estimated 4.4 percent of U.S. adults experience bipolar disorder at some time in their lives.
To qualify for benefits for bipolar, according to the Social Security Administration’s “blue book” list of impairments, your condition must have three or more of these characteristics:
- Pressured speech
- Flight of ideas
- Inflated self-esteem
- Decreased need for sleep
- Distractibility
- Involvement in activities without regard to a high chance of painful consequences
- Increase in goal-directed activity or physical agitation
Winning disability benefits is all about proving you can’t work. So you also must show an extreme limitation in one—or marked limitation in two—of the following areas of mental functioning:
- Understanding, remembering or applying information
- Interacting with others
- Concentrating, persisting or maintaining pace on tasks
- Adapting to change and managing your emotions
Or, you can show that your mental disorder is “serious and persistent.” That is, you have a medically documented history of bipolar disorder over a period of at least two years, and there is evidence that:
- You’ve received medical treatment, mental health therapy, psychosocial supports, or a highly structured setting that diminishes your symptoms.
- And you experience marginal adjustment—in other words you have minimal capacity to adapt to changes in your environment or to demands that are not already part of your daily life.
With Bipolar Disorder, Get Help From a Trusted Disability Attorney
If you know you can’t work because of a mental health condition such as bipolar disorder, your anxiety goes even higher. You need disability income. And you need help from a disability attorney who treats you with dignity and respect.
The lawyers at Levine Benjamin have extensive experience helping people with mental health conditions. Levine Benjamin is the largest Social Security Disability law firm in Michigan.
We’ll listen to you and your needs. We’ll guide you through Social Security’s special legal system for awarding disability benefits. We understand this is about more than money—it’s about your independence.