If you have been denied long term disability benefits, you are likely wondering what your next steps are. The purpose of this week’s installment of the Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog is to give you some tips on what those next steps are towards getting the long term disability benefits which you deserve.
Long Term Disability Benefits are very topical for this week’s blog post given that yesterday was Bell Let’s Talk Day to raise awareness for mental health. The thing about mental health is that it’s invisible. When you break a leg, you’re put in to a cast and the whole world can see that you’re injured and not able to walk properly.
In contrast, mental health is invisible to the naked eye. Everyday people walk around with mental health issues which the outside world isn’t aware of, or doesn’t understand.
This dovetails nicely with long term disability claims not only because mental health can have long term consequences on one’s ability to work; but also because the vast majority of our long term disability clients suffer from mental health issues. It’s because mental health issues are invisible, and can be subjective in nature; which gives long term disability insurers an easy out to write them off as “made up“, “exaggerated“, or which won’t impact your ability to work. Mental health issues won’t show up on an x-ray, CT Scan or MRI. That gives a long term disability insurer a reason to say that the mental health issues which you are struggling with are simply a fabrication of your mind or that mental health isn’t a big deal and that you should be able to work.