How To Get Social Security Disability & SSI: Psychosis

Legal Author - Travis Hansen, Esq.
Updated - April 19, 2025

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The Significance Of Medical Records In A Psychosis Disability Case

Psychosis is a very severe mental disorder characterized by reality distortion. When you apply for benefits, Social Security will order and review your medical records. Many find it difficult to get proper medical care. Insurance, money, and mediocre health services often prevent one from getting the care they deserve. Those with psychosis seem unusually prone to avoiding mental health treatment. However, medical care produces records that establish the existence and severity of your psychosis and disability. Without these records, it is very hard to establish your disability case with Social Security. Due to the severity of psychosis, a diagnosis should be made by a psychologist or a psychiatrist and not your primary doctor.

When critiquing your medical records, Social Security will look for the symptoms you report. It will examine how often you are having symptoms, under what conditions, and their severity. Psychosis symptoms generally include the following:

1. Hallucinations,
2. Delusions,
3. Disorganized thinking,
4. Disorganized or abnormal motor behavior,
5. Poor concentration,
6. Psychosis, and
7. Suicidal thoughts.

Social Security will also examine your treatment regimen. There is no cure for psychosis, of course. But treatment will explain to Social Security what your treater thinks about the severity of your symptoms and how well you are (or are not) progressing. Treatment usually has mixed results, and it is generally focused on mitigating symptoms through counseling and medications.

Tip #1. Those suffering psychosis often have ER visits or in-patient hospitalizations. These records are extremely important as they demonstrate the severity of your psychosis condition. If your functioning is so poor that you are unable to functioning outside of a highly supported psychiatric facility, you are likely disabled.

Tip #2. Suffers often have civil court, criminal court, or CPS involvement. It is often though these records should be kept from Social Security as they place you in a bad light. However, if any of these records exist because of psychotic symptomatology, you should submit them because they will demonstrate the consequences of the psychotic symptoms.

Tip #3. Drugs and alcohol use or abuse, or DAA as Social Security calls it, is common with psychosis suffers. It DAA is an issue, you will need to establish that DAA is not "material," that is, it is not the cause of your psychosis, or it does not cause you psychosis to be disabling.

Tip #4. Social Security usually awards psychosis cases at the initial application level, and if it is not, it is usually for one of three reasons:

1. You have not been diagnosed by a psychiatrist or psychologist (you have instead been diagnosed by a mental health counselor or a primary doctor),
2. You are not getting ongoing mental health treatment and your psychosis symptoms are not being documented, or
3. Drugs or alcohol (DDA) are at issue in your case and Social Security thinks it is the DAA that disables you.

In any case, if you are not allowed at the initial level, it is nearly always the case that Social Security does not believe you actually suffer from psychosis.

Step 3 - Psychosis: The Social Security & SSI Listings

The Adult Listing 12.03 and Child Listing 112.03 require that you satisfy points 1 and 2, or 1 and 3:

1. One or more of -
1. Reality misapprehension,
2. Confused thoughts, or
3. Behavior abnormalities; or
2. An extreme constraint of one or two marked constraints in dealing with two of -
1. Facts and data,
2. Community,
3. Production rate, or
4. Your own self; or
3. Your psychosis has lasted greater than two years, and -
1. You are getting mental health counseling, and
2. You have a highly restricted capability to perform your daily needs.

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