I have often spoken about the “process” of filing, but that mostly concerns the administrative ordeal of filing: of preparing, of gathering the medical documentation, of writing up the proper applicant’s statement, of putting together the legal arguments in support thereof, etc. Then, of course, I have spoken about the “human” side of things — of the difficult human ordeal of going through the process. There is the initial psychological barrier — of starting the administrative process, which is somewhat of an implicit acknowledgment that a person is indeed “disabled”, as if that concept or label has some sort of a “stigma” attached thereto.
One would think that in the 21st Century, all such stigmas would have been extinguished and extinct; and, indeed, most such stigmas are merely self-imposed. Often, we are our own worst enemy; there is the barrier of ourselves in the process, of actually starting the process. This is often why an attorney is the best person to handle a Federal Disability Retirement application — because it allows for the process to begin, without it being so intimately and personal a matter to the applicant.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire