Veterans get ready for the mental health C&P exam like it’s a test they can pass when it’s more of a questionnaire about ordinary things, work, sleep, who you still talk to. The event that brought you there takes up less of it than you’d think. The examiner fills out the form while you talk, and what lands on it is what the rest of your file gets read against.
A mental health C&P exam is an appointment whose sole purpose is gathering information that helps VA decide your claim. The provider won't treat you, refer you elsewhere, or prescribe anything.
It may take 15 minutes or more than an hour depending on what you claimed and how much more information VA needs.
How should you prepare in the days before your mental health C&P exam?
You don’t need to bring anything to the C&P exam. If you have new non-VA medical records, like records from a recent surgery, submit them before the appointment, because your provider may look at records you bring but can’t submit them for you. Also, plan to arrive 15 minutes early, since arriving late can lead the provider to cancel.
The “preparation” you need is really just knowing your own history well enough to describe it in order across the following five areas:
- Social, marital, and family history
- Occupational and educational history
- Mental health history, including prescribed medications and family mental health
- Legal and behavioral history
- Substance abuse history
Having dates and a concrete example of pre-military, military, and post-military history ready for each of those five areas keeps you from having to reconstruct them under pressure while the examiner is typing with the risk of missing something important.
Can someone come with you to your mental health C&P exam?
You can ask the provider if a caregiver or family member can stay with you, and the provider may ask them to wait outside the exam room. If you have children, it’s best you plan for childcare, because you may need to discuss sensitive topics related to your claim.
What does the examiner ask about your service history and the events behind your claim?
The first stretch of the appointment is history, and the examiner works from your claim file, likely pulling questions from the Disability Benefits Questionnaire for each condition you’re claiming. That’s why it might feel like you’re explaining things the file already covers but answer as if they’re starting from nothing.
From there, the questions move through the five history areas above, each covered before, during, and after service. The comparison across those three periods carries weight in the record, because it’s what shows whether service is where the change happened.
How much detail do you have to give about a traumatic event?
This is the part of the appointment some people brace for, but it’s usually shorter than you’d think. The examiner isn’t interested in a complete narrative, they only need enough to connect the diagnosis to something that happened in service, which is the link the record has to carry.
In practice that means the examiner needs to know what happened, roughly when, and where you were, and the rest of the questions tend to move toward what changed afterward. “My convoy was hit outside Kandahar in the spring of 2011, and I stopped sleeping through the night after that” gives them enough for the connection they’re documenting. You don’t have to go minute by minute through that day.
If your claim comes from an assault during service and you never reported it, the record doesn't have to come from your service file. Evidence of changes in your behavior around that time can support it.
What does the examiner ask about your current symptoms and daily life?
This part of the exam maps your symptoms onto a checklist written in terms of frequency and function. The DBQ instructs the examiner to check all symptoms that apply to your diagnoses, so this part of the form can end up with a dozen boxes marked.
Elsewhere on the same form, in the diagnosis section, the examiner picks one description of your overall level of occupational and social impairment across all your mental diagnoses, and the form allows only one. That single choice carries more weight in the record than any individual box, because it’s the summary judgment the rest of the file gets read against.
There’s also a behavioral observations field, and it’s an open box rather than a checklist, so how you look and act during the appointment becomes part of the report alongside what you say.
Beyond the boxes, the rating agency looks at how often symptoms come, how bad they get, how long they last, how long your remissions run, and how you hold up during them. Which means mentioning your good weeks isn’t a bad thing. But leaving them out can make your file seem flat.
Bear in mind the examiner only writes down what you give them. If you tell them “My anxiety is bad” that leaves them nothing to work with. But if you tell them “I’ve left work early four times in the past two months because of panic attacks, usually after a meeting“, that gives them something to put in the record.
What is different if your exam is by video or by phone?
The format changes where you are, not what gets asked. VA may schedule a telehealth exam, which is a phone or video appointment you can join from home, while in-person exams require travel to your local VA medical center or a contractor location.
The DBQ header asks the examiner to record whether you were examined in person and, if not, how the examination was conducted, so the format is documented in the report itself.
VA doesn’t publish guidance on how the interview is conducted differently in each format, or on what you’re expected to arrange on your end for a telehealth exam.
How does the exam end and what happens to the examiner’s report?
The appointment ends without any indication of where you stand. You can ask the provider what’s happening during the exam, but they can’t answer questions about the claims process, tell you the results, or make decisions about your claim. They only write up a report and send it to VA.
VA then reviews everything in the file, including the exam report, the medical records you’ve given them, results of any tests the provider ordered, statements from you and others about your claim, and your military medical and personnel records before making a decision and sending a decision letter.
The report can also get sent back. If the diagnosis doesn’t line up with the DSM-5 (the manual that defines mental health diagnoses), or if nothing in the report backs it up, the rating agency sends it to the examiner and asks them to show what it’s based on.
What should you do in the days right after your exam?
There’s not much to do, but two things are worth handling while the appointment is fresh. If you had a bad experience with the provider, VA encourages you to report it right away, through the contractor’s satisfaction survey, by writing a letter and submitting it as part of your claim file, or by calling the contractor who scheduled the exam. The letter is the version that stays with the record.
The other is travel. If your exam was with a contractor rather than at a VA facility, they’ll reimburse you for the trip without you having to ask. If nothing arrives within 14 days of your appointment, call them.
How do you request a copy of your exam report?
You have to request the final report, and you can’t get results at the exam or from the provider. The request goes through a Freedom of Information Act or Privacy Act Request, VA Form 20-10206.
If you want to understand how your file reads before the decision letter arrives, you can book a free strategy call and go through it.
Go Deeper:
FAQs about the mental health C&P exam
Can you reschedule a mental health C&P exam?
Yes, with at least 48 hours of notice to the VA medical center or contractor, and it may push back your claim. If the exam is with a contractor there’s a tighter rule: one reschedule per exam, and the new date has to fall within five days of the original. If none of those five days work for you, tell the contractor.
What happens if you don't attend your mental health C&P exam?
It depends on what kind of claim the exam was for. If it was scheduled for an original compensation claim, VA rates the claim on whatever evidence is already in the file. For any other original claim, a supplemental claim for something previously denied, or a claim for an increase, the claim gets denied.
Do you get a separate exam for each mental health condition you claimed?
Not for mental health. Claiming more than one condition can mean more than one exam, and VA tries to put them on the same day, but your mental health diagnoses get covered together on one questionnaire. The form asks whether you have more than one mental disorder diagnosed, whether the symptoms can be separated out by diagnosis, and then asks for that single impairment summary across all of them.
The exception is PTSD. If that’s one of your diagnoses, the examiner completes the Initial PTSD Questionnaire instead of the general Mental Disorders one.
Does the examiner see your private treatment records, or only the ones VA holds?
Only what’s in the file, and the form lets the examiner record that no records were reviewed at all. So if you’re being treated outside VA, those records reach the examiner only if you get them to VA first. You can upload them through the claim status tool, send them through your accredited representative or VSO, or mail them to your nearest VA regional office.
Can you ask for a different examiner?
You can ask for a male or female provider for a mental health exam, or where the claim involves a condition resulting from military sexual trauma, and you can ask for transportation help or other accommodations when you confirm the appointment. VA doesn’t publish a way to request a different examiner over a disagreement or a bad experience. The complaint route above is what exists for that.
Who can conduct the exam is set, though. An initial mental disorders exam has to be done by a board-certified or board-eligible psychiatrist, a licensed doctorate-level psychologist, a non-licensed doctorate-level psychologist working toward licensure under close supervision, a psychiatry resident under close supervision, or a VHA psychology trainee under close supervision completing an internship or residency toward a doctorate.