Disability Attorney For Bipolar Disorder

Periods of feeling unusually energized, happy, and outgoing, followed by other periods of unexplained sadness or anxiety accompanied by feeling hopeless, could be signs of bipolar disorder. The symptoms need to be discussed with a healthcare professional who will conduct an examination and appropriate testing to arrive at a diagnosis.

Bipolar disorder is a mental health condition that can affect your daily life, including your ability to work and earn a living. The bipolar disability attorneys at the GCC Law Firm want you to know that financial assistance may be available through Social Security disability for bipolar disorder.

Life brings with it normal ups and downs, but someone diagnosed with bipolar disorder experiences extreme ranges of emotions in response to them. A person with bipolar disorder has manic episodes when they feel happy or elated with high levels of energy. These manic episodes can be followed by depressive periods with feelings of sadness, indifference, or hopelessness. Depressive episodes may be accompanied by low energy levels. Some people with the disorder may experience delusions and hallucinations that further impact their ability to function at home and work.

Bipolar disorder disability benefits through the SSDI and SSI programs can help you meet financial obligations if the symptoms of the disorder prevent you from working. The SSDI program requires a work history at jobs where Social Security taxes were paid on your earnings.

You must have worked long enough and recently enough to meet the work requirements to qualify for SSD for bipolar disorder. Social Security measures time worked by work credits. You earn a work credit for every $1,810 in earnings in 2025, with a maximum of four credits annually. The per-credit earnings may change yearly.

Instead of work history as SSDI requires, financial need forms the basis for SSI eligibility. You must have little or no income, and the resources or assets available cannot have a value exceeding $2,000 for individuals and $3,000 for eligible couples. Qualifying for bipolar disability benefits through SSDI and SSI also requires that you be disabled according to a five-step disability review process. The key to success is having the evidence, including medical records, to support your claim.

The bipolar disability claim process evaluates your condition to determine if you are disabled according to the standards used by the Social Security Administration. According to the standard for disability, you must meet all of the following conditions:

• Have a medically determinable physical or mental impairment or a combination of impairments.
• The impairment or impairments must prevent you from doing substantial gainful activity.
• The impairment or impairments must have lasted or be expected to last for at least 12 months or result in death.

Social Security does not approve disability benefits for medical conditions causing temporary or partial disability. Your application for benefits goes through the following five-step sequential review process to determine if you are disabled:

• Can you do substantial gainful activity? If you are working, the first step determines whether you can do any substantial gainful activity (SGA) based on monthly earnings. If you earn more than $1,620 monthly during 2025 from working, you are doing SGA, and are not disabled. The SGA limit for someone who is blind is $2,700. If you are not working or earn less than the SGA limits, your claim moves to the next step.
• Do you have a medically determinable severe impairment? The medical documentation must prove your impairment to be severe, total, and permanent. If it is, the process moves to the next step.
• Does the impairment or impairments meet or equal a listing? Social Security created a listing of impairments with medical criteria for each of them. Impairments that meet or equal a listing are considered severe enough to be disabling, and the evaluation process ends, but if they do not, the process moves to the next step.

Getting the disability benefits you need when you cannot work is important, so trust the bipolar disability attorneys at GCC Law to give your claim the attention it needs and deserves. Instead of fighting Social Security alone, allow us to do it for you. From assistance with the initial application to challenging unfavorable decisions through the appeal process, contact us for a free consultation to learn how we can help.