Hi I’m Sharon Christie your nurse attorney for Social Security disability benefits. I’ve talked to a lot of people who suffer from vertigo and it is a very disturbing condition. It may be related to another disease process or it may have come sort of out of the blue. I’ve had a number of people contact me about a condition called benign paroxysmal positional vertigo or BPPV. Maybe that’s a term that you’ve heard in your case so people call me and they want to know. You know can I get disability benefits? I’m having a really hard time functioning day to day and that’s really that’s the question for us.. 

So, when somebody suffers from vertigo, we want to look at what is the cause. Is it a condition say like BPPV? Or is it related to some other disease condition? How frequently do the dizzy spells occur? Now that’s key because if they are very occasional only lasting for a few seconds it is certainly disrupting when it happens but that’s not something that’s likely to disrupt your ability to hold down any type of job. Which is the standard for Social Security disability. On the other hand, let’s say you are someone who is suffering from vertigo that is happening frequently several times or more during the day. That it lasts longer than a few seconds. That it affects your ability to walk. Where your gait it can make you very wobbly because suddenly you feel like everything is spinning or you are just not centered properly and it is very distracting when it happens.

Well, that’s a situation that’s different from the first situation I described because that’s the kind of situation that if you are on the job and you have multiple attacks. That’s what I’ll call it multiple attacks. These dizzy spells throughout the day well that very likely can interfere with your ability to work. 

So, the question that you have to look at first is you know what’s causing the vertigo and then how frequently is it occurring? How long does it last and how disruptive are these dizzy spells? How did they disrupt you in your day-to-day activities?

Say if you’re trying to take care of your house or you need to drive to the store. How are those activities being disrupted? If they are so we look at that very closely to determine how these attacks of dizziness are going to affect you on the job and if it is a situation where you are going to be seriously affected on the job and your ability to do either the job you’ve done in the past or any other kind of work. Then that’s a situation where we could look at a disability case for you.