SSI is known as “crazy money” since one must “act crazy” to receive it. Oftentimes several people in the same household, adults and children, collect SSI checks. Easy-to-fake learning, behavioral, and mental disorders are the most common “disabilities,” especially among children, who comprise 55 percent of all cases. More than half who go on SSI as a child, requalify as adults. SSI recipients are not required to get treatment for their or their children's disabilities. No requalification can be good since it can be harmful for kids to take drugs for fake or exaggerated symptoms. The SSI program for children is rapidly expanding, with the biggest increase among kids with mental, behavioral and learning disorders, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), speech delays, autism and bipolar disorder.
For a short time, I taught a Healthy Living class for Community Health, which included some info about how to get your life on track. Interesting and appalling how much resistance that created in some of the students.
One fellow in particular, maybe 25 - 30, hard to tell because he was so fat, said he spent all his time sitting in a lounger chair playing video games. I detected signs of intelligence, gave him some encouragement to lose some weight, apply for work.
OH boy, he scurried back into his "I can't do anything" shell quick as a cockroach. Either he had been told he was an idiot from birth and believed it OR he was told to ACT LIKE an idiot to keep those bennies coming.
What a horrible waste of a life.