Denied Disability for Schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia is a terrible disease that strikes many people in their late teens and early 20s. Schizophrenia can make it impossible for someone to have normal relationships and find gainful employment. You or a loved one may have worked for a few years prior to being diagnosed with schizophrenia. During that time, you may have paid into a long-term disability insurance plan that was intended to provide for your needs if you were to become disabled. Now schizophrenia has rendered you unable to work and you have filed a claim with your long-term disability insurance carrier, only for it to be denied.

If this is happened to you, or someone you love, don’t be a victim of the insurance company. If your long-term disability claim due to schizophrenia has been denied, call us. We won’t let the insurance company push you around. We fight for our clients until they get the benefits they deserve.

About Schizophrenia Disability

Schizophrenia is a disabling psychiatric disorder that affects about 1% of Americans. The symptoms generally fall under three categories:

• Positive symptoms: The person has psychotic behaviors that cause them to lose touch with reality, including hallucinations, delusions, thought disorders, and more rarely, movement disorders. (DSM IV)
• Negative symptoms: The person experiences disruption of normal emotions and behaviors. Symptoms include a “flat affect” (where the person speaks in a monotonous voice, or their face does not move), lack of pleasure of normal life, inability to motivate, little or no speaking, and neglect of personal hygiene and other self-help. (DSM IV)
• Cognitive symptoms: The person is unable to understand information and use information in decision-making; they cannot pay attention and have trouble with working memory and using information they have just learned. Although these symptoms may be subtle on the surface, the disorder can severely impede the person’s ability to make a living and handle everyday tasks. (DSM IV)

Sometimes the medical evidence presents a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, where the individual shows symptoms of schizophrenia as well as symptoms of “affective” (mood) disorders – such as bipolar disorder. (DSM IV)

What Is Schizophrenia?

There is no cure for schizophrenia, at best schizophrenia can be managed with medication. The effectiveness of the medication varies greatly from individual to individual. It is often difficult to keep a schizophrenic patient on their treatment plan due to the side effects of the medication. Schizophrenic patients will simply stop taking their medication believing that they can handle or control their condition. Schizophrenia is a serious mental condition that almost always qualifies for long-term disability benefits, but insurance companies routinely deny schizophrenic patients what they are entitled to receive.

Schizophrenia most often presents itself between the ages of 20 and 45 and primarily affects men but can sometimes also affect women. Schizophrenia can be a progressive type disease, starting slowly but gradually affecting every area of the schizophrenic patient’s life. Due to the symptoms of schizophrenia, schizophrenic patients often find it impossible to carry on normal relationships or to work, but beyond that, without proper treatment, schizophrenic patients will lose touch with reality altogether. Schizophrenic patients will you unable to plan their day, dress themselves, engage in normal conversations, and will likely find no need for proper hygiene. Many homeless people on the streets were once productive members of society before being afflicted with schizophrenia. Now robbed of their connection to reality, they wander aimlessly in the street in their own alternate reality. Sadly, many of these schizophrenic homeless people, may have had long-term disability insurance that could have helped them get the treatment they need, but they were denied their benefits and did not seek out the assistance of a long-term disability insurance attorney.

Causes of Schizophrenia

At this time, no one knows for sure what causes schizophrenia. Medical researchers believe that schizophrenia is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. Neurological studies of people with schizophrenia also show multiple abnormalities in the brain. These factors, combined with an apparent genetic predisposition to schizophrenia, are likely the cause of the disease. So many factors and variables are involved with schizophrenic patients, it is likely that there is no single cause to schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia Disability Claims and Long Term Disability Insurance Denials

Insurance company employee doctors and other medical experts to review the records of schizophrenic patients who have filed claims for long-term disability. The job of an insurance company doctor is to find cause to deny long-term disability claims for schizophrenia. Long-term disability claims for schizophrenic patients are often filed and pursued by family members of the person with schizophrenia. The schizophrenic person themselves are not typically able to file in deal with such a complicated claims process. The family of a schizophrenic patient is often adjusting to dealing with their schizophrenic loved one during the time that a long-term disability claim for schizophrenia is filed. This may result in some minor deficiency in the initial claim, a missed deadline, or other curable defects in the claim process. However, the insurance company will capitalize on any defect possible to deny your long-term disability claim for schizophrenia.

If your long-term disability claim for schizophrenia has been denied, call us. We take on big insurance companies every day. We fight for our clients until they get the benefits they deserve.

Contact Us Today

If your claim for long term disability insurance benefits for schizophrenia was denied, you need an experienced attorney to get you the benefits you deserve. Call Mehr Fairbanks Trial Lawyers without delay, for a free evaluation of your claim: 800-249-3731.

We represent disability insurance claimants all over the United States and deal routinely with the “big deniers” of group and individual LTD insurance.