The Board remands the claim for service connection of an acquired psychiatric disability, to include unspecified bipolar and related disorder with anxious distress, cannabis use disorder, and other hallucinogen use disorder, due to missing records and a need for additional evidence.
The deciding factor: Remand is necessary to obtain missing service treatment records and private medical records, as well as to provide an addendum medical opinion based on the complete record.
- Claimed conditions
- unspecified bipolar and related disorder with anxious distress, cannabis use disorder, other hallucinogen use disorder
- How they argued it
- Direct service connection
- Exposure basis
- None
- Rating assigned
- None in this decision
- Decision date
- December 4, 2025
- Citation
- A25104649
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 A25104649.
What this means for you
A remand is not a loss. The Board sent the case back for more development — often a new exam or missing records — before making a final decision. Many remands later end in a grant, and the decision spells out exactly what the Board wanted to see.
What you can do next
Related decisions
Other Board decisions on a similar condition or argued the same way.
- Dismissed
The Veteran's appeal for an increased rating in excess of 70 percent for a mental health disorder is dismissed. The Board grants the Veteran a TDIU from September 2, 2019, but no earlier.
- Denied
The Veteran's claim for a disability rating in excess of 70 percent for his service-connected psychiatric conditions (panic attacks, generalized anxiety disorder, alcohol use disorder, and cannabis use disorder) was denied. The Board found that the Veteran did not meet the criteria for a 100 percent rating due to insufficient evidence of total occupational and social impairment.
- Granted
The Veteran's acquired psychiatric disorder, including PTSD, is related to active service and the Board has granted service connection for this condition.
- Remanded (sent back)
The Board has determined that there was a predecisional duty to assist error and remands the case for an addendum opinion regarding the nature and etiology of the Veteran's obstructive sleep apnea, specifically addressing whether his service-connected PTSD caused or aggravated obesity, which may be an intermediate step in a secondary service-connection analysis.
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