i do understand where you are coming from - they cannot assume that you are getting better without the approval of your doctor - as long as you are still seeing your doctor you shopuld be ok if your doctor has not seen any improvements in you then you should be fine, but sometimes the doctor does not know if you have improved only you know if you are gettting better but i would not worry about it to much

Raven,

I think you will get better advice if you start your own thread.

It's considered poor forum etiquette on most sites to resurrect old threads, unless you are the OP with an update. I was particualry confused by this one when I checked the dates and picked up on the month/day, but didn't notice the year was 2011. I was REALLY surprised to see a response from me because I know I was on vacation March 11th (this year) and not posting here !

Did the SSA send you to this appointment as part of a review or did you go for this eval on your own ?

If this was a review, I think the more relevant info would be about how your work trials went. You may want to share more details on that....or not. Realize that we can form a more reasonable opinion the more info we have, but anything we say is still just our opinions. Most here are SSDI recipients or those waiting for approval. A few have more direct experience and knowledge from working in this field. None of us are the reviewer who will look at your claim/review.

I do not know if there is anything specific about excluding all prior felons from receiving benefits. IF there was such a rule, it would have been pretty stupid for SSA to approve you for benefits 10 years ago, but take away your benefits now, for a felony that was legally dealt with 15 years ago.

I'm not sure about the pot issue. Not to judge too harshly, because I have friends who enjoy the occassional poke and are otherwise productive memebers of society ( and my friends !) , but I'd pick a legal vice if I were seeing a shrink regularly and had mental health issues severe enough to cause total disability. That's a poor decision and non compliance with your medical plan. You also have to consider (and I would hope SSA will consider) that many people and most of us with mental health issues DO make SOME poor decisions and are sometimes noncompliant. It kind of goes with having mental health issues.

That said....there are political forces trying to make it so that any welfare recipients would have to have random drug testing to make sure they are not wasting public funds on illegal activities. If anything like that ever were to pass, I'm sure they'd plan to test SSDI and SSI recipients next. I'd make sure I had nothing to hide.