Is Your Learning Disability Severe Enough?

In order to try to assess whether or not a learning disability would tend to be a basis for a child or an adult to apply for and receive Social Security benefit or Supplemental Security Income benefits it is necessary to review the base line requirements of what the Social Security administration considers a disability for which it will afford benefits.

Social Security May Call a Learning Disability a Personality disorder

For the purpose of assigning benefits Social Security may place a learning disability under the personality disorder category on it list of acceptable impairments.  Social Security considers that a personality disorder exists when personality traits are inflexible and maladaptive and cause either significant impairment in social or occupational functioning or subjective distress. 

Required Disorder Severity Level

The required level of severity for a “personality disorder,” which may be a learning disability, is met when the requirements designated below in both list 1and list e2 are satisfied.

There must be deeply ingrained, maladaptive patterns of behavior associated with at least one of the following:

• Seclusiveness or autistic thinking
• Pathologically inappropriate suspiciousness or hostility; or
• Oddities of thought, perception, speech and behavior; or
• Persistent disturbances of mood or affect; or
• Pathological dependence, passivity, or aggressivity; or
• Intense and unstable interpersonal relationships with impulsive, damaging behaviors

AND

2. There must be behaviors must result in at least two of the following:

• Marked restriction of activities of daily living; or
• Marked difficulties in maintaining social functioning; or
• Marked difficulties in maintaining concentration, persistence, or pace; or
• Repeated episodes of decompensation, each of extended duration.

The long story is, if the learning disability that you or your family member has is severe enough to meet the required level of severity above which are essentially those which the Social Security administration has set out in its requirements mental disorder then if your personal circumstances will meet all the other requirements to be afforded benefits under the Social Security or the Supplemental  Security Income program you should apply for benefits and begin the formal disability evaluation process to be afforded benefits.

Getting Legal Help

If you or a member of your family has a learning disability and want to apply for Social Security programs for benefits it may be useful to contact a disability law attorney to discuss the learning disability and other applicant base line requirements to determine if it would be helpful to begin the application processes of one of the programs in order to access benefits.