The Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) scale is a scoring system used by mental health professionals to assess how well an individual is functioning in his or her everyday life. It is generally used to measure the impact a person’s mental health condition is having on his or her ability to accomplish tasks of daily living. Scores range from 0 to 100, with 100 representing superior functioning. Medical professionals take into account the difficulty the individual being tested faces in their daily life, including with social, psychological, occupational, and academic functioning before assig ..read more

Veterans who are recovering from a surgery or who are temporarily immobilized due to a service-connected disability may be eligible for a temporary 100 percent disability rating and compensation. The duration of this temporary 100 percent rating varies depending on the condition, but in general it can continue for one to three months, if not longer. In order to qualify for this type of benefit, veterans must have had surgery or received other treatment at a VA medical center or VA approved hospital for a disability related to their military service. Additionally, they must meet one of the foll ..read more

Witnessing loss of life in any context is a traumatic experience. For veterans, who often have a higher probability of witnessing death than those in the general population, the experience can be compounded further because of the context in which they witness death.  In combat situations, veterans not only fear for their own life, but also for the lives of those around them. Witnessing a death under those circumstances can cause significant distress. According to one study, there is a positive correlation between a military service member witnessing someone being killed and the developmen ..read more

How Is Sleep Apnea Related To PTSD? There are several different types of sleep apnea, and every person with sleep apnea experiences the condition to differing degrees of severity. Considering that around 20 percent of veterans are diagnosed with sleep apnea at some point in their lifetime, the VA has developed a schedular disability rating system for sleep apnea so that veterans whose sleep apnea was caused by their service can receive compensation. There are a variety of conditions that occur in tandem with sleep apnea, but one of the most interesting ones among veterans is the relationship b ..read more

Under the legacy appeals system, veterans are sent a Supplemental Statement Of The Case (SSOC) by the agency of original jurisdiction when there are any material changes in, or additions to, the information included in the Statement of Case(SOC) or any prior SSOC. When this occurs, veterans can choose to ignore the document, in which case their claim will be certified to the Board, or they can respond in one of the following ways: Submit new and material evidence within 30 days of receiving the SSOC and expressly refuse to waive VA Regional Office consideration, which requires the Regional Of ..read more

Many veterans with VA disability claims are familiar with the VA’s reevaluation process. Whenever the VA determines that there is a need to verify the continued existence or severity of a disability, it will request that the veteran be reexamined and, if needed, have his or her compensation amount reevaluated. When this process results in the VA issuing a proposal to reduce the veteran’s compensation, veterans are able to fight this decision.  First, for 60 days following the issuance of the “proposal to reduce” letter, the veteran can submit any evidence he or she thinks shows that the p ..read more

When trying to get service connection for a seizure disorder like epilepsy or psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, veterans need to submit evidence to the VA to support their claim. One of the most useful types of evidence veterans can submit is a seizure log. A seizure log is a chronological record of all the seizures a veteran experiences in a set period of time.  Seizure logs can be kept in any format, but handwritten lists, Excel, and calendar formats are the easiest to maintain and understand. In this log, veterans should keep track of the date and time their seizures occur, the durat ..read more

Any veteran seeking service connection for a mental health condition will have to complete a Compensation and Pension (C&P) exam before the VA will decide his or her claim. The most important thing to remember with these exams is that the VA contracts out its examiners, meaning it uses physicians from external companies to perform the exam. The VA tends to underpay these contracted examiners, which results in many low quality C&P examination reports. These low quality examination reports are due to the contracted examiners performing incomplete file reviews, rushing veterans during the ..read more

When veterans apply for service connection for hearing loss, the VA will send them to a state-licensed audiologist to get their hearing evaluated. This exam will include a puretone audiometry test and a controlled speech discrimination test. A pure tone audiometry test measures the least audible sound that a person can hear, whereas the speech discrimination test asseses the veteran’s ability to understand speech from background noise. If a veteran’s speech discrimination is poor, the speech may sound garbled.  During a speech discrimination test, veterans will wear headphones and be aske ..read more

Under the legacy appeals process, whenever a veteran received a Statement of the Case (SOC) that he or she wanted to appeal, he or she would use a VA Form 9. On this form, the veteran would lay out his or her arguments relating to errors of fact or law made by the agency of original jurisdiction in making the decision, and once complete would submit the form to the VA as a substantive appeal.  The deadline for filing a VA Form 9 in response to an SOC is 60 days from the date the SOC was issued, so the veteran must submit any appeals he or she wishes to file in that time frame or his or he ..read more