Medical Eligibility for Social Security Disability

If you have strong medical records, you may qualify for disability automatically by meeting the description of an impairment listed in the SSA Blue Book.

When considering whether you qualify for disability, Social Security needs to evaluate all your medical conditions together.

Your residual functional capacity (RFC) is an important part of a Social Security disability determination.

Substantial gainful activity is the level of work that a person without a disability can do.

Learn what transferable skills are, which jobs impart transferable skills, and what happens when Social Security says that you can use those skills at another job.

Learn how Social Security defines unskilled work, semi-skilled work, and skilled work.

While obesity alone rarely qualifies for disability benefits, obesity can help you get benefits if it adds to the limitations you suffer from other medical conditions.

Degenerative disc disease, herniated discs, and spinal stenosis all have different chances of getting approved for disability benefits.

Social Security can deny you disability benefits when your impairments would go away if you stopped drinking or using drugs,

Can disability applicants with mental disorders who abuse medication, drugs, or alcohol still get disability benefits? It depends.

You can't get disability for substance use disorder alone, but Social Security can't penalize you by denying you disability benefits for abusing drugs or alcohol.

Written by a former SSA medical consultant, Nolo's Guide to Social Security Disability is the essential book for learning about the disability process, and can be helpful whether you hire or lawyer or not.