For People With Mental Illness, the Path to Disability Benefits Can Be Long and Difficult
Public Health Watch by Gina JimĂ©nez, October 6, 2025Â
Every day for a solid year, Krystal Nice would check the Social Security Administration website at 5:15 a.m. for updates. She had applied for disability benefits in April 2024, but kept waiting for a decision. With two children and little income or savings, the monthly $1,537 disability check could help her make ends meet, including paying the rent.
Nice, now 32, of Burkburnett, Texas, has post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, agoraphobia and anxiety — all diagnosed. She has a history of family trauma and domestic violence and doesn’t remember a time when she wasn’t depressed. Still, the past few years have been especially rough. Her grandmother’s dementia worsened, her relationship with her mother deteriorated and she hasn’t been able to work full time. Her psychiatrist — Nice was on Medicaid — suggested she file for disability benefits because of her mental health condition. She decided to try, though she’d been rejected seven years ago for lack of proof.
Denials and delays in getting disability benefits — via Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) or the Supplemental Security Income program (SSI) — remain a source of frustration and anguish for many people. That’s especially true for people with mental illness, which can be harder to substantiate than physical disabilities and harder to prove will prevent them from working.
In fiscal year 2023, 62% of disability claims filed with the Social Security Administration were initially denied. The agency doesn’t publish data on denial rates by type of disability, but a study released in 2018 found that while the denial rate for all claims was 62%, the rate was 76% for those with a primary diagnosis of an affective or mood disorder, such as bipolar disorder and depression.
Disability lawyers and advocates say people with mental disabilities often wait longer for an SSA decision on benefits. In fiscal 2024, the average time it took to process a disability claim was 231 days, SSA data show. The most time-consuming task is a medical determination of disability, made by SSA-funded offices in each state.
In the first four months of fiscal 2025, Texas had the third longest wait time for determining disability, at 324 days. The national overall wait time has risen by more than 105% since 2018, largely because of a shortage of state-level staff, the agency said.
A delay of months or a denial can be excruciating for applicants, exacting a financial and emotional toll. Many can’t work and if they can, they are not allowed to earn more than $1,620 a month — the federal limit per individual for 2025.