QUESTIONS ON A SOCIAL SECURITY DISABILITY MENTAL EXAM

When you file for social security disability (SSD) or supplemental security income (SSI) benefits based on a mental impairment, you may be sent for a consultative examination (CE) with a psychiatrist. Consultative exams are often required by the social security administration because the claimant either has not received treatment for their condition recently (within the past 60 days), or has no medical records at all to support a diagnosis of mental impairment.

Those who apply for disability for any condition, physical or mental, must be able to prove that 1) they are currently suffering from a severe impairment that prevents them from working and 2) their condition is not likely to improve, regardless of medical treatment, over the next year.

Without a recent diagnosis from a physician and medical records to back up that diagnosis, a disability examiner has no medical evidence upon which to base his decision. In disability claims filed for mental conditions it is not uncommon for a claimant who has never sought medical or psychiatric treatment for symptoms of depression, fatigue, or anxiety, to list these symptoms on his or her disability application. In these instances a consultative exam with a private psychiatrist or psychologist will be scheduled (physicians who perform CEs are not social security employees) to determine the claimant’s current mental state. CEs are generally short, and the physician who performs a mental consultative exam is required to send his or her findings to social security within 10 days.

There are different mental exam types, and each is used to measure a different aspect of a claimant’s mental function. One of the most common types of mental exams is the mental status exam (MSE), which is used to provide insight into your perception of yourself and your surroundings (who you are, where you are, what year it is, etc.) as well as basic memory and language function. Some questions that may be listed on the MSE are: “What is your name? Where do you live? Who is the President of the United States?” You may also be asked to perform other tasks that require basic mental function, such as making comparisons between two objects, or counting backwards by two’s, or interpreting a picture or metaphor.

If you have suffered a stroke or brain injury, you may be required to complete a memory scale exam to determine the effect of the injury on your short-term and long-term memory. A memory scale may also be ordered for those filing for disability on the basis of depression or fibromyalgia, conditions that can negatively impact memory function.

Other types of mental exams include psychiatric exams and psychological exams. Psychiatric exams are performed by MDs, and are used to determine if someone is suffering from a psychiatric disorder such a schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress syndrome, mania, etc., while psychologicals are ordered for those who may have suffered a decline in their mental function or who have a low IQ in general (psychologicals are often used to evaluate those with little formal education or with a history of enrollment in special needs courses).

The type of mental consultative examination that social security requires depends in large part on the symptoms a claimant lists on his or her initial application for SSD or SSI. However, regardless of the type of mental CE performed, the results of these examinations can have a great impact (positive or negative) on the outcome of disability claims filed on the basis of mental impairment.

Social Security Disability and SSI Disability Information