Is it possible that your man died somewhere else outside of Maryland , maybe even out of country , perhaps on a vacation or something ? My only other ideas are that his death was not reported or there is some error in his Social Security number in either his application or possible death record that makes him hard to find . Have you tried looking for an independent family tree or FindAGrave ? Maybe an obit for him or a family member might list it ? <| sep |> But what if the positive reason is directly tied to the mental health . As in , if I got lower intelligence I would have less negative mental health because I would be incapable of understanding and internalizing the scope andor size of the universe among other inescapably large things .