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Alizah64
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Member Since: Nov 2018
Location: Milwaukee
Posts: 6
5 yr Member
Question Nov 27, 2018 at 08:16 AM
 
Hi, first time posting.

I was approved for SSDI (Disability) in 2015 for rapid-cycling Bipolar Disorder and C-PTSD. The process took about 6 months.

I'd actually received the diagnosis of "manic depression" (what they called Bipolar then) way back in 1980, as a teenager. While I did have a history of several hospitalizations and a suicide attempt, I had still managed to work full-time in a professional occupation all those years until I was laid off in 2014. In other words, I'd had a significant psychiatric history, but I had also been very high-functioning.

The "high-functioning" ended after my layoff in 2014, which happened at the same time as multiple other traumas and losses. I had a psychotic break, and even with intensive therapy I have not regained any level of functioning. My work actually held me together all those years, and if I COULD be working right now, believe me, I would.

All that said, over the past couple of years it's been the consensus (between my doctors and me) that my original diagnosis was wrong. It was never Bipolar, but severe anxiety, wrong meds and multiple traumas I had never had the chance to heal from.

I know a big reason why my SSDI application was approved was because of my Bipolar diagnosis. Bipolar is one of the few conditions that is understood to be severe, chronic and unlikely to improve, and I was already in my 50s.

But now I'm anxious that if my diagnosis is no longer Bipolar, they're going to think I should be back at work. In reality, I'm at a much lower level of functioning today with the C-PTSD than I was with the Bipolar disorder. But it seems their decisions have less to do with reality and more to do with labels.

I have not been contacted or anything; my case has not come up for review. But I don't know how this works. Will they be checking at some point to see if my diagnosis is the same as in 2015? Or?

Thanks in advance.
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