The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization of personnel who make the initial and reconsideration determinations on Social Security disability claims, has issued its Summer 2008 newsletter.
The following is a letter to the President of NADE reproduced in the newsletter that others may find of interest:
The following is a letter to the President of NADE reproduced in the newsletter that others may find of interest:
I thought that you and your colleagues might be interested in the following:
I looked at 100 consecutive claimant scores on the Test of Memory Malingering(TOMM) from psychological evaluations that I conducted between 8/07 to 6/08 and found that 36% provided a suboptimal performance. In other words, 36% of the claimants did not provide a valid level of effort during testing, for whatever reason. The age range was 8 to 66. This finding suggests to me the importance of including an effort level test, such as the TOMM, in most CE psychological test batteries.
Sincerely,
Jack Stephenson, Ph.D.
Torrance, CA 90505
1 comment:
This may seem to some to be only a matter of academic or professional opinion among psychologists. Offical SSA opinion is presently that such tests of malingering are not a consideration (I rely upon memory as I do not have the National instruction available). Your blog gives a lot of criticism of SSA and DDS "culture of denial", but one can see why the concern: if DDS denials are so "wrong", why is there such fairly widespread fraud reported? How is it that after the passage of years, a beneficiary, who had been adjudicated as meeting listing 12.05B or C at age16 to 20, now years later has begun to function far beyond the expectation of "retardation"? This situation accounts for numerous FSF reviews.
I also look eagerly to the revision of the mental listings, but I do so for reasons that perhaps give you pause--a more careful assessment of the fraudulent attempts of those not truly disabled who attempt to portray themselves as "mentally ill" or "retarded" serve only to weaken political support for the truly disabled.
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