A top VA disability attorney explains how to get a PTSD rating of 70% on a VA disability claim.

Hi, my name is Amanda Manier and I am a veteran advocate and attorney here at Veterans Law Group. I wanted to take a couple of minutes to help maybe walk through the process and explain a little bit more in layman's terms what it takes to get a PTSD rating of 70 percent. So what we're looking at is PTSD is rated in 10 percent, then it goes to 30, then 50, then 70, then 100. So if you are currently service-connected for PTSD and maybe you're at a 10 percent rating or a 50 percent rating, you want to know what does it take to get a 70 percent rating or the next level up. That's what I want to talk about today. Now in the VA decisions that go out, they will give you a list of symptoms and so what I want to do is walk through those symptoms, kind of help give you a little bit more understanding of what they mean. Let's start with inability to establish and maintain effective relationships. Basically, that's just meaning that you had difficulty with having relationships with people or keeping relationships with people. So if since your PTSD diagnosis or since the stress that occurred to cause the PTSD, you have changed in your relationships, meaning maybe you had a relationship with a brother or a family member or your parents and then afterwards you find it hard time to really connect with them or understand them and you feel like a lot that they don't understand you. We see in this level that a lot of times relationships between man and husband and wife end up dissolving as well as just dating relationships. Also difficulty in adapting to stressful circumstances. So this is going to be including work and work-like settings. So if you have difficulty when there is a stress that comes into your life that maybe you weren't expecting, you get in an argument with your boss, there is a lot of expectation, you have difficulty with somebody else in a work-like environment, you just have difficulty with adapting with that, those are going to fall within a 70 percent rating as well. We can come up with all kinds of examples of that. But if you have difficulty in just adapting to stressful circumstances, traffic, dealing with travel, a lot of those things. The other one that falls in a 70 percent, which I know is somewhat difficult to admit, but it's really important to tell the C&T examiner or the VA if you have this, is neglect of personal appearance and hygiene. So if you're getting to the point that you're just not taking a shower or taking care of yourself, especially if nobody's around and you just don't care, that's something you need to make sure you tell the examiner about it. If your spouse or your significant other in your life is saying, hey, you might want to go take care of that, something that you need to make sure that you're aware of. A lot of that has to do with just not being motivated to take care of yourself. Impaired impulse control, such as unprovoked irritability with periods of violence. If you seem to have anger outbursts, maybe in traffic and it gets a little bit out of control, some of that impulse control could be spending, it could be throwing things in anger, those kind of things. Next, near continuous panic or depression. Now, generally I see this with people show up either in one or the other, where they feel a nearly constant feeling of depression and heaviness or a constant fear of, or a constant state of anxiety or panic. And this is when it is starting to affect your ability to function just kind of in a normal environment, where like it kind of coincides with that, not really wanting to get up and take a shower and put yourself together. Maybe not wanting to leave the house unless you absolutely have to, because you feel that sense of anxiety. In addition to that, some of the other things we're going to look at is some obsessive rituals that interfere with routine activities. So, if you have noticed that since you have maybe been overseas and have PTSD, you notice that you obsessively lock the door, that you obsessively make sure that the door is locked, or that you make sure that the curtains are closed, that you don't want to be able to see from other people to see you from outside of your home. Some of those things just kind of get outside of routine activities. So, you're getting ready to go to bed, but you've got to check the door three times. All of those are going to kind of fall within that. The last one I want to talk about is probably the hardest one to talk about, and that is what I call suicide ideation. And I've learned in my experience working with many veterans with PTSD that it's a lot to be able to admit that you're having those thoughts, and then also understanding what the ideation means. Suicide ideation doesn't mean that you've tried to commit suicide. It doesn't mean that you have a plan to commit suicide. However, it may just mean that you have thought about it. Maybe you've thought that maybe the world would be better off without you. You've thought about, what if I ran into that tree? Those, I know, are not easy things to talk about, but when you're going to a CMT examination and you're talking to the VA about your symptoms and you want to get properly rated, that's the time to be honest about how it is on your worst day. So if you're ever going to talk to anybody about it, talk to the examiner. If you have difficulty in talking to the examiner or you have an examination that's coming up, if you want to get some help or you want to just talk to somebody about whether or not you qualify for that 70% rating, our office offers free consultation. We'd be happy to talk to you and see if it's something that we believe that we can help you with. Thank you.