Prevalence of Serious Mental Illness (SMI) in Washington State

I found this really cool report made by the Mental Health Division (MHD) in 2000 for the adherence to a legislation mandated by, I would assume, the government (Chapter 7, Laws of 2001, E2, Section 204(5)(c) and Chapter 25, Laws of 2003, E1 Section 204(5)(b)). This law instated in 1998 says that a study “shall examine how reasonable estimates of the prevalence of mental illness relate to the incidence of persons enrolled in medical assistance programs in each regional support network area.”

What’s really cool about this 2000 study is the fact that is estimates the prevalence of serious mental illnesses (SMI’s) in Washington state by region.

This file, wa-stats-comparisons.doc, contains the comparisons made by regions within Washington State from the 2000 full US census. It’s interesting to see that areas such as King county and Northern Puget sound have an extreamly high percentage of adults who suffer from a serious mental illness, 29.5% and 16.3% respectively. According to this study Grays Harbor and northeastern Washington have the lowest occurance of SIM’s at 1.1% and 1.2% respectively.

MHD found that 295,884 adult Washingtonians suffer form a SMI and that 133,406 of these people need public mental health services. This means that as of 2000, 5.02% of Washington adults have a SMI but only about 45.09% of those with a SMI need public mental health services.