Approximately one in five people in the US experience some form of mental illness each year. Thankfully, for many of these people, treatments are effective. Still, somewhere around 14 million people each year experience serious mental illness, defined, in part, as a mental illness that prevents or significantly affects the person’s ability to work. In cases of severe mental illness (for instance, depression and anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and bipolar disorder), symptoms of severely depressed mood, panic, fear, difficulty sleeping, impairment of the ability to focus, and difficulty being around or getting along with others are just a few of the most significant chronic symptoms. Mental illness can make it difficult even to do usually effortless things like leaving the house or performing simple tasks or self-care tasks. Sometimes, the treatment causes additional side effects that further limit a person’s ability to function. Further complicating things, over 10% of people in the US who have mental health problems either do not have medical insurance or readily available access to mental health services.

Most mental health disorders do not affect a person the same way every day; it is very typical for a person with this kind of medical condition to have “good days and bad days,” days where functioning does not seem very affected at all, but other days where it’s a struggle even to do basic daily activities.

A disabling condition does not need to be disabling every day to support a finding that a person is unable to work because being able to work means doing it daily, week after week, on a regular and continuous basis.