OPM Disability Retirement: Those Days of Mental Clarity

One often remarks that we live for such days; when energy, motivation, clarity of mind and enthusiasm for life surges through our veins; one’s outlook is positive, the mystery of life is resolved, and no challenge is too onerous to overcome.  But then the mundane monotony of repetitive thoughtlessness returns; and life is back to the normalcy of day-to-day living.

Do we really live for such moments?  Or is it actually the opposite effect — that such days are mere reminders that living constitutes a linear course of relative quietude, interrupted by interludes of awakenings, like dreams impeded by nightmares in the solitude of self-contained solace.

Medical conditions have a similar impact; days of chronic pain, of lethargy and depression; and the cycle of becoming momentarily pain-free reminds one that there exists a plateau of health where the negation of illness or loss of wellness is the actual normative lifestyle, but where a medical condition reverses such a state of consciousness such that we adapt and come to accept a life of pain and chronic illness.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers, the daily pain and impact of psychiatric conditions, including depression, anxiety, PTSD, stress-induced somatic disorders, as well as lesser-accepted physical conditions of Fibromyalgia, unspecified cognitive disorders, etc., can be the foundational basis of a Federal Disability Retirement claim.  OPM Disability Retirement is a benefit which is available to all Federal and Postal workers who are under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, once the minimum years of Federal Service is met, and the preponderance of the evidence proves that the Federal or Postal employee is no longer able to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional requirements of the job.

Like those days of mental clarity, the necessity of filing for Federal OPM Disability Retirement benefits becomes a reality at some point in the evolution of one’s career, in the struggle to maintain sanity of health in a world which allows for chaos in this bureaucratized phenomena called the Federal system of government.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire