Disabilities and the people who suffer them come in all shapes and sizes. Typical occupations of people we represent would include surgeons, anesthesiologists, all of the medical sub specialties, micro surgeons, lawyers, chiropractors, CEOs of companies, financial planners, CPAs, really anyone who has a specific professional occupation that they are working in who develops a condition that prevents them from doing their work in a normal manner. The reasons for the disability range as much as you can imagine. All kinds of things happen to people. People can suffer psychologically related illnesses or develop a debilitating addiction to a substance that impairs their professional performance.
A common disability is a back related injury. Some people who become disabled with a back injury have that compounded because they wind up addicted to the pain killing drugs used for the treatment of their original injury, the back issue. Now, not only are they disabled from the back injury but suffer this additional problem of addiction. Often depression results as well because a person who has worked his/her whole life to be able to be a successful practitioner in their chosen field wakes up one morning or over the course of a relatively short time, realizing he/she can no longer do what they’ve geared their whole life to be able to do. Their job is often a large component of their identity and who they perceive themselves to be and all of that is slowly taken away or damaged.
It’s very common for people to become depressed as a result of these mounting difficulties and painful realizations and the insurance companies will sometimes agree to pay for a maximum of say 5 years for clinical depression because it’s a psychiatric illness and the policy limits liability for that. However, the underlying cause of the disability (which actually triggered the depression) goes unaddressed and unevaluated and the disability claim is technically addressed but only in the guise of the depression. It has the feel of a magician’s sleight of hand.
Five years later the disability for the depression runs out, and cannot be reopened but the underlying disability which was the source of the depression has never been addressed nor can it be. This is a critical reason to seek out the services of someone who is expert at assessing and evaluating a full disability claim (not just the most obvious symptoms) before a settlement is reached with an insurance company.
