The Board granted service connection for the cause of the Veteran's death, finding that his cognitive impairment, which was part of his service-connected mental health disability, contributed to his fatal ingestion of battery fluid.
The deciding factor: The VA medical opinions concluded that the Veteran's cognitive impairment/vascular dementia contributed to his death, and this symptomatology is considered part of his service-connected mental health disorder.
- Claimed conditions
- Generalized Anxiety Disorder with Depressive Features, Cognitive Impairment (indifferentiable from symptoms of Generalized Anxiety Disorder with Depressive Features), Vascular Dementia
- How they argued it
- Direct service connection
- Exposure basis
- None
- Rating assigned
- None in this decision
- Decision date
- November 14, 2025
- Citation
- 25014014
Veterans Law Judge
Decisions by this judge: 1,812 · Granted: 30% (granted or partly granted, in the vetted decisions on this site)
Judge attribution: 2025 complete; earlier years partial.
This is a plain-language summary generated by AI from a public Board of Veterans’ Appeals decision. It can contain errors — always verify against the original. Look up the original decision on VA.gov (opens in a new tab) using citation 25014014.
What this means for you
A grant means the Board agreed the veteran was entitled to the benefit. Decisions like this show the kind of evidence and arguments that tend to succeed for claims like it.
What you can do next
Related decisions
Other Board decisions on a similar condition or argued the same way.
- Granted
The Veteran was granted a 100 percent disability rating for generalized anxiety disorder with depressive features, effective October 6, 2023.
- Denied
The Board denied the Veteran's claim for service connection for PTSD and Generalized Anxiety Disorder with Depressive Features, finding no clear and unmistakable error in the May 1993 and August 1993 rating decisions.
- Denied
The Veteran's initial claim for a higher rating for anxiety disorder was granted, but with a limitation to the period prior to June 21, 2023. The Board found that his symptoms more closely approximated a 70 percent disability rating at all times on appeal.,The issue of entitlement to an increased rating for low back disability remains pending and is remanded.
- Granted
The Veteran's vascular dementia is granted as secondary to his service-connected ischemic heart condition. He is also granted a 60 percent rating for ischemic heart condition from March 27, 2013 to February 23, 2015.
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