We use this term fre­quent­ly, as do our many part­ner agen­cies. It helps fur­ther define some of the peo­ple we are reach­ing out to with our pro­gram­ming. When we say a pro­gram or edu­ca­tion course is tar­get­ed at indi­vid­u­als with SPMI or their fam­i­lies, we gen­er­al­ly mean the fed­er­al and state def­i­n­i­tions of SPMI.

Per the Fed­er­al Reg­is­ter from May 20, 1993, adults with SPMI are aged 18 or over, who cur­rent­ly or at any time dur­ing the last year, have had a diag­nos­able men­tal, behav­ioral, or emo­tion­al dis­or­der of suf­fi­cient dura­tion to mer­it diag­nos­tic cri­te­ria spec­i­fied with­in the Diag­nos­tic and Sta­tis­ti­cal Man­u­al of Men­tal Dis­or­ders that has result­ed in func­tion­al impair­ment which sub­stan­tial­ly inter­feres with or lim­its one or more major life activ­i­ties.” These include most of the codes from DSM‑V with the excep­tion of sub­stance use dis­or­ders, and devel­op­men­tal dis­or­ders, unless they co-occur with anoth­er diag­nos­able seri­ous men­tal ill­ness. All of these dis­or­ders have episod­ic, recur­rent, or per­sis­tent fea­tures; how­ev­er, they vary in terms of sever­i­ty and dis­abling effects.

Indi­vid­u­als with SPMIs have dif­fi­cul­ties that sub­stan­tial­ly inter­fere with or lim­it role func­tion­ing in one or more major life activ­i­ties includ­ing basic liv­ing skills (e.g. eat­ing, bathing, dress­ing); instru­men­tal liv­ing skills (e.g. main­tain­ing a house­hold, man­ag­ing mon­ey, get­ting around the com­mu­ni­ty, tak­ing pre­scribed med­ica­tion); and func­tion­ing in social, fam­i­ly and vocational/educational con­texts. Adults who would have met func­tion­al impair­ment cri­te­ria dur­ing the ref­er­enced year with­out the ben­e­fit of treat­ment or oth­er sup­port ser­vices are con­sid­ered to have seri­ous men­tal illnesses.

Ken­tucky has a statute defin­ing men­tal ill­ness which reads:

“‘Men­tal ill­ness’ means a diag­nos­tic term that cov­ers many clin­i­cal cat­e­gories, typ­i­cal­ly includ­ing behav­ioral or psy­cho­log­i­cal symp­toms, or both, along with impair­ment of per­son­al and social func­tion, and specif­i­cal­ly defined and clin­i­cal­ly inter­pret­ed through ref­er­ence to cri­te­ria con­tained in the Diag­nos­tic and Sta­tis­ti­cal Man­u­al of Men­tal Dis­or­ders (Third Edi­tion) and any sub­se­quent revi­sion there­to, of the Amer­i­can Psy­chi­atric Asso­ci­a­tion. ‘Chron­ic’ means that clin­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant symp­toms of men­tal ill­ness have per­sist­ed in the indi­vid­ual for a con­tin­u­ous peri­od of at least two (2) years, or that the indi­vid­ual has been hos­pi­tal­ized for men­tal ill­ness more than once in the last two (2) years, and that the indi­vid­ual is present­ly sig­nif­i­cant­ly impaired in his abil­i­ty to func­tion social­ly or occu­pa­tion­al­ly, or both.”

With the excep­tion of the out­dat­ed DSM, there aren’t many dif­fer­ences in the con­cept behind these def­i­n­i­tions at the state and fed­er­al lev­els. If you or your loved one has most of the cri­te­ria, there’s a LOT to be found for you through NAMI Lex­ing­ton’s programming!

Our pro­gram­ming has tra­di­tion­al­ly been focused on adults.  How­ev­er, our NAMI BASICS edu­ca­tion course is focused on fam­i­ly mem­bers of ado­les­cents. It’s a change our com­mu­ni­ty has asked for — a resource for ado­les­cents- that has final­ly come to fruition. Click on the title for more information.

We love to hear your feed­back on our work and on needs you have wit­nessed or expe­ri­enced in the com­mu­ni­ty. Please con­sid­er fol­low­ing us on Face­book or Twitter.

 

More info on SPMI def­i­n­i­tions: https://dbhdid.ky.gov/dbh/documents/TCMManual-Adult.pdf

http://www.lrc.ky.gov/statutes/statute.aspx?id=40795

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/getting-serious-about-mental-illnesses.shtml

 

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