ADDING STATE COUNTS OF THE SEVERELY AND PERSISTENTLY MENTALLY-ILL

This paper reports on an empirical analysis of definitions of severe and persistent mental illness in three states: New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. The objective is to determine whether the counts of the severely and persistently mentally ill produced by individual states are additive and meaningful in the aggregate. The definition of severe and persistent mental illness is applied to an inner-city sample of clients in order to establish empirical estimates of the variance in the definitions. The characteristics of individuals identified as seriously mentally ill across all three states are examined to develop a framework for reporting meaningful national estimates. © 1991 Human Sciences Press, Inc.