At some point in your Social Security disability case – usually during the initial application evaluation, but possibly later – Social Security will send you out for a “consultative examination” with one or more doctors.   In my experience, the physical medicine consultative evaluations are fairly useless – Social Security tends to contract with “industrial clinics” who handle worker’s compensation claims and those reports often minimize symptoms.

Mental health evaluations, by contrast, often help your case – perhaps because psychologists and psychiatrists are generally not biased from being part of an adversarial workers’ compensation system and because mental health professionals often see a need for on-going therapy for many that they see.   To put this another way, physical medicine doctors face insurance company pressure and financial incentive to fix a problem as fast as possible, whereas mental health professionals are not looking for a “cure” as much as they are looking for gradual improvement over time, and thus on-going visits.

I have read literally thousands of physical and mental health consultative examination reports and as a rule the mental health evaluation reports usually offer some help, while the physical medicine reports either hurt my client’s case or offer no conclusions at all.

You may be wondering why you are being scheduled for either a physical, a mental evaluation or both?   The Social Security law requires the Commissioner of Social Security (and by extension, the employees of the agency) to help “develop” your medical record.   Consultative evaluations, therefore, would satisfy SSA’s statutory requirement even when considering the claims of applicants who have little or no medical treatment (due to lack of money or other causes). Continue reading →