In filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS or CSRS, one must always attempt to shy away from any characterization which might portray one’s medical condition as one of “situational disability“, because the Office of Personnel Management will not only immediately embrace such characterization and regurgitate it to your detriment; moreover, they will deny the disability retirement case based upon such grounds.
A determination that one’s medical condition is merely “situational” will be the downfall of any Federal Disability Retirement application. One can counter it, of course, with amended and updated medical reports, but it is always best to refrain from any such characterization from the outset. To be deemed and portrayed as a “situational disability” can occur as a result of an inadvertent statement by a treating doctor, or by an attempt by the Applicant to provide some “historical context” of how one’s “medical conditions” arose, by relating stories about the stresses in the workplace, how the supervisor “caused” a hostile work environment, which then precipitated and exacerbated one’s medical conditions. Don’t. Go and file an EEO Complaint; file a grievance; do other things. Leave it out of a Federal Disability Retirement application.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
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