VA Secondary Disability Claims
Video Transcript
Hello, I’m Eric Gang, the Veterans Disability Attorney. Today I want to talk to you a little bit about secondary claims for psychiatric disabilities. What that means is that you develop a psychiatric disability secondary to a service-connected physical problem of some sort.
The Vicious Cycle of Chronic Pain
This is a common example: let’s just say you’re service-connected for a low back disability. You’re in constant pain. They’re giving you medication, but nothing seems to help. You can’t sleep well at night, you’re debilitated, and the pain is unbearable.
Over time, being in chronic pain produces a depressed state of mind. You develop severe depression. The more depressed you become, the more you feel the pain. The more you feel the pain, the more you become depressed. It’s a vicious cycle. Perhaps you’re in that situation; maybe the depression has nothing to do with service, but it has everything to do with the chronic pain that you feel as a result of your service-connected disability.
If you’re in that situation, I want to encourage you to aggressively investigate the possibility of becoming service-connected for your depression, anxiety, or whatever it may be as a result of your service-connected physical problem.
Other Common Medical Conditions
Maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s a general medical condition. Perhaps you have Type 2 Diabetes with all the residual problems: maybe you have peripheral neuropathy, diabetic retinopathy, or erectile dysfunction. Whatever it is, if these conditions are causing severe depression, you need to consider getting service-connected for depression based on a secondary relationship between that and your service-connected health problems.
It’s very important. This area of litigation is big right now and chances are you may not be considering it adequately in your claim.
A Real World Example
Let me give you a quick example of a case that just came in this week with a claim based on this.
I represented a veteran for the residuals of prostate cancer. He had prostate surgery and was left with pretty bad urinary incontinence. What we did is we raised his rating to the maximum rate for that particular urinary incontinence problem. However, he was wetting himself frequently, couldn’t go out in public, and then he became depressed.
So, we then filed a claim for depression secondary to the prostate cancer. We won that claim. From there, we filed the claim for total disability, and the Board of Veterans Appeals just granted that claim for total disability. So this veteran will now be getting paid at the maximum rate.
Why Linking is Important
Part of our strategy, of course, was to link the depression into the service-connected physical problems. Many times, a physical problem alone may not be enough to make you unable to work, particularly depending on your background and education. But depression sometimes can be so debilitating that you can’t get out of bed every day. It makes it hard to maintain the pace and the drive necessary to compete in the open labor market.
So it’s very important to consider these secondary service connection claims. If you’re service-connected for a physical disability and it’s producing depression, and they’ve denied that, you want to consider exploring your appellate options and consider hiring legal counsel.
Contact Us
We have a lot of resources available on this website, and I encourage you to take advantage of them. We are also available to help you if you need help. If you’re tired of handling this claim on your own and want to employ the services of a professional to help you, feel free to contact our office. We’re here to help.