Pain and Function Report in a Social Security Disability Claim

When making a claim to the Social Security Administration for disability benefits, you will need to explain exactly how your impairment affect your daily activities. One part of this is reporting how your disability impairs your both in terms of pain and your ability to work and do daily things. You'll need to be very careful and accurate in how you present this information.

How the Information is Used

The Social Security Administration will send various forms to you asking for them to be completed, and many of them are very lengthy. You are already exhausted, hurting, and experiencing money problems on top of all that. You do not have the energy so you slap down some answers. SSA will use those answers against you. Your answers are providing "allegations of daily activities" to the SSA and they will factor those allegations in when calculation your residual functional capacity or limitations. See Residual Functional Capacity for more information.

Be As Accurate as Possible

It is very important for you to complete these forms, but to also do it in a responsible manner. You should answer as you perform on your worst day. You should be specific: do you really care for the dogs or do you just occasionally feed them if no one else is able? Do you drive: yes? or do you rarely drive and when you do, it's only two blocks to the store. The way you answer the questions makes a huge difference on your case.

The Disability Determination Service (DDS), or Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) if your case goes to hearing, will use this information to determine if you are disabled as per the definition provided through legislation. Any errors, overstatements, understatements or missing information can potentially come back to haunt you.