State Codes and Statutes
Statutes >
Iowa >
Title-6 >
Subtitle-3 >
Chapter-225c >
225c-51
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. Section History: Recent Form
2008 Acts, ch 1187, §53; 2009 Acts, ch 41, §91, 92
