Social Security Disability SSI : Psychological and other mental testing

I came across someone else's blog and the individual was commenting on the fact that her mother was sent to a consultative examination (a CE exam) for her social security disability application. The exam was a psychological CE, designed to gauge a client's mental status and level of psychological functional limitations.

The blogger indicated that the exam took 2 1/2 hours to complete. Not every psychological CE may take this long, but there's no question that the mental exams scheduled by social security are not at all like consultative physical exams---not when it comes to the time element (it is extremely common to hear a disability claimant state that their physical consultative exam took only ten minutes).

A claimant who is required to attend a psychological exam would probably find it beneficial to get a decent amount of sleep the night before because if it seems apparent to the psychologist administering the exam that "best effort" was not given, the exam results may be considered invalid. That, of course, amounts to a waste of time for everyone, including the disability claimant.

Here's another tip: never try, for whatever reason, to deliberately manipulate the results of a psychological exam, because the individuals who administer such examinations are fairly expert at detecting this and will, typically note in the exam report any attempt to influence the outcome of the test.



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