Find Out If You Qualify for Social Security Disability Benefits after a Traumatic Brain Injury
Traumatic brain injuries can have many causes. You can suffer a traumatic brain injury in a fall, a car accident or any accident where you experience a blow to the head.
If you can’t work because of your symptoms, your physical injury also creates a financial crisis.
This is a difficult time in your life. But monthly checks from Social Security Disability could allow you to focus on your health and move beyond the trauma you’ve suffered.
The attorneys at the Law Offices of Karen Kraus Bill take the time to understand the health problems you’re facing after a traumatic brain injury (TBI), so you can win disability benefits.
What Are Common Symptoms of TBI?
Traumatic brain injury is a major cause of death and disability in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Experiencing a TBI can lead to any of these symptoms:
- Altering your ability to think
- Making it difficult for you to speak and communicate
- Affecting your emotions
- Changing your behavior
- Causing physical disorders
Some of your symptoms may lessen over time, but some may get worse.
If a TBI keeps you from working, it’s natural to worry about how you’ll face the future.
But when you’re dealing with the physical and neurological effects of a TBI, you shouldn’t have to wonder how you’ll support yourself and your family. This is where disability benefits can help.
Social Security Provides Disability Benefits for People with TBI
Social Security officially recognized TBI as a distinct condition that qualifies for disability benefits in 2016. Prior to that, Social Security considered it in conjunction with other conditions.
To win your disability claim, you must show your condition meets Social Security’s definition for TBI.
You must show one of two major symptoms:
- The inability to control movement of at least two extremities for at least three months in a row after your injury. (This may be an arm and a leg, two arms or two legs.) It must be extremely difficult for you to balance while standing or walking, difficult to stand up from a seated position, or difficult use your arms.
– or –
- Marked physical problems and marked limitation in one of these areas for at least three months following your injury:
-
- — Understanding, remembering, or applying information
- — Interacting with others
- — Concentrating, persisting, maintaining pace and finishing tasks
- — Adapting or managing oneself, as in regulating your emotions or behavior
Every case of TBI is different.
You may have no physical symptoms, but your neurological symptoms may still qualify you for benefits under Social Security’s criteria for neurological disorders.
You may be denied the first time you apply—as most people are—but you should file an appeal. When a Social Security administrative law judge reviews your case, he or she could still approve your benefits.
You don’t have to pay anything for the Law Offices of Karen Kraus Bill to evaluate your situation.
Get Support for Your Claim
No matter what medical impairment you have, winning Social Security Disability benefits always requires you to prove three things:
- You can’t continue in your past work because of your health.
- You can’t switch to a new line of work.
- Your condition will last at least a year.
Filing for Social Security Disability benefits is a complicated legal process involving thousands of rules.
At the Law Offices of Karen Kraus Bill, we’ve been helping people win benefits in Columbia, Jefferson City, Fulton, Moberly, Sedalia and all across Missouri for more than 30 years.
If you can’t work because of a TBI, we understand that you’re going through an extremely difficult time, and we put care and attention into your case.
