225C.51 Definitions.

For the purposes of this subchapter:

1. “Child” or “children” means a person or persons under eighteen years of age.

2. “Children’s system” or “mental health services system for children and youth” means the mental health services system for children and youth implemented pursuant to this subchapter.

3. “Functional impairment” means difficulties that substantially interfere with or limit a person from achieving or maintaining one or more developmentally appropriate social, behavioral, cognitive, communicative, or adaptive skills and that substantially interfere with or limit the person’s role or functioning in family, school, or community activities. “Functional impairment” includes difficulties of episodic, recurrent, and continuous duration. “Functional impairment” does not include difficulties resulting from temporary and expected responses to stressful events in a person’s environment.

4. “Other qualifying mental health disorder” means a mental health crisis or any diagnosable mental health disorder that is likely to lead to mental health crisis unless there is an intervention.

5. “Serious emotional disturbance” means a diagnosable mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder of sufficient duration to meet diagnostic criteria specified within the most current diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders published by the American psychiatric association that results in a functional impairment. “Serious emotional disturbance” does not include substance use and developmental disorders unless such disorders co-occur with such a diagnosable mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder.

6. “Youth” means a person eighteen years of age or older but under twenty-two years of age who met the criteria for having a serious emotional disturbance prior to the age of eighteen.

2008 Acts, ch 1187, §53; 2009 Acts, ch 41, §91, 92