Smokie

Hi Smokie Welcome to Hadit. The VA rolls up and combines disabilities where they can and then gives the highest rating based on all the rated symptoms you have. Once they grant the disability you can't claim that same disability again as symptoms of another disability. That is called pyramiding. It happens quite often with MH disabilities as it can be hard to definitely say the symptom is connected to anxiety as opposed to depression, for example. So they give the higher rating but you can't get two seperate ratings for the same disability, in this example MH. See https://cck-law.com/blog/pyramiding-how-to-avoid-stacking-your-va-ratings/  Just a thought but did you also put in for a hearing disability seperate throm the tinnitus? If not, you should consider; it would be a separate disability than tinnitus. Check and see if you actually claimed it.