Can You Get Disability
for Fibromyalgia
in Louisiana?

6 Challenges Getting Social Security Disability for Fibromyalgia in Metairie and Beyond

A disability claim for fibromyalgia is different from claims for other health conditions for several reasons:

1. People—sometimes including disability claims examiners—don’t understand fibromyalgia.
2. It may take extra work to “prove” you have a case of fibromyalgia that rules out working.
3. You’ll need highly specific types of medical evidence and reports from your doctors.
4. You’ll need more than a one-time diagnosis; you’ll have to show a record of ongoing treatment for fibromyalgia.
5. You’ll have to show that your fibromyalgia symptoms aren’t actually caused by something else.
6. Your condition itself—the energy drain, the brain fog, etc.—can make a disability benefits application a particular burden.

At least partly because fibromyalgia is a complicated condition—doctors haven’t figured out what causes it—the Social Security Administration (SSA) didn’t even recognize it as a qualifying disability until 2012.

But then the SSA finally did issue guidelines for how to qualify for disability benefits with fibromyalgia, guidelines you can now use to get benefits yourself. And Social Security recognized that, “Fibromyalgia is a common syndrome.”

In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said over 4 million Americans live with fibromyalgia.

If you’re one of them, talk to the New Orleans disability lawyers at Empower Disability to see how you might apply for disability benefits with fibromyalgia—and how a disability attorney can make the process easier for you.

It doesn’t cost you anything to have an initial conversation with us about your situation.

What You Need to Get Disability Benefits for Fibromyalgia in New Orleans, Metairie and across Louisiana

To approve you for disability benefits, Social Security says it needs, “sufficient objective evidence to support a finding that (your) impairment so limits (your) functional abilities that it precludes (you) from performing any substantial gainful activity.”

Objective evidence means evidence outside of your own word on how fibromyalgia impacts your life. (“Substantial gainful activity” is their word for being able to work a significant amount.)

Social Security uses the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) Criteria for the Classification of Fibromyalgia from 2010, or the ACR Preliminary Diagnostic Criteria from 1990, as its guides for what you need to show in a disability application for fibromyalgia.

Under those rules, these are the symptoms you need to document:

• Lasting pain all over your body
• 11 specific tender points on your body
• Fatigue
• Cognitive and memory problems, which people call “fibro fog”
• Lack of refreshment from sleep
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Irritable bowel syndrome
• Repeat occurrence of the symptoms

And how do you prove you have these conditions beyond just saying it?

You can provide records showing a diagnosis from a doctor, ongoing medical treatment, physical exam reports, the doctor’s treatment notes, reports from a psychologist, and statements from people who know you personally—family, friends, neighbors, co-workers or more—about the ways fibromyalgia has changed your daily routine.

You can also add any other medical conditions you have besides fibromyalgia to your disability claim, and the evidence that goes along with that.

A Metairie disability lawyer from Empower Disability can help you with every step of the process, so you can avoid mistakes and focus more on your own well-being.

You pay no fee for a disability lawyer until you get benefits.

And when you get benefits, the added support coming in can make your life so much easier.

Let’s get started.