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Reinvestment Grant#RFA06H16GS1 Working Draft 3.8.4 Tab 4: Project Narrative 3.8.4.1 Statement of the Problem Indian River County (IRC) is located in the Treasure Coast region of Florida and was formed in 1925 from the northern portion of St. Lucie County. It was named for the Indian River Lagoon which runs through the eastern portion of the county. Indian River County comprises a land area of 617 square miles with a population of 147,919. The 2015 United States Census Bureau population breakdown by race is: 87.1%White; 9.3% Black; 0.5% American Indian; 1.5% Asian; 1.5% Two or More Races; with 12.1% of the overall population being of Hispanic Origin. Indian River County has a Per Capita Income of $31,089 and a Median Household Income of$44,645. The Poverty Rate of 14.7% reflects an increase of 1.3% from 2013; and, 22.8% of the population under the age of 65 does not have health insurance and 9.8% have a disability. Despite the high Median income assessments, it is more accurate to interpret the County's composite financial demographics as skewed due to several isolated pockets of markedly elevated wealth. From a socio-economic perspective, Indian River County is a severely dichotomous community with the affluent population of the eastern County's coastal towns standing in stark contrast to the poverty in rural and urban parts of the County. While the Indian River County Mental Health Court (IRCMHC) facilitates the needs of mentally ill individuals with criminal justice involvement without regard for economic variables, the reality is that the financially stable population in need of help will be accessed to services that will be paid for by insurance or other means of private- payment; therefore, rendering the majority of the proposed services that will be funded by the Criminal Justice, Mental Health, and Substance Abuse (CJMHSA) Reinvestment Grant program to be administered to the poor in Indian River County. According to the CDC's Public Health Surveillance Fact Sheet on Mental Health, approximately 25% of all U.S. adults have a mental illness and nearly 50% of U.S. adults will develop at least one mental illness during their lifetime. In 2014, the National Institute of Mental Health determined there is an estimated 9.8 million adults aged 18 or older in the U.S. with Serious Mental Illness (SMI); this number represents 4.2%of all adults in the United States. Based on the 2014 Indian River County 18 years and older adult population of 119,814, there are 5,032 adults in IRC with SMI. And, the financially disadvantaged among this population are at the highest risk as research has determined that poverty has a deleterious effect on both the causation and opportunities for remediation of mental illness. According to the CDC's National Health Interview Survey, 2009-2013, a total of 8.7% of adults with income below the federal poverty level had serious psychological distress, compared with 1.2% of adults with incomes at or above 400% of the poverty level. (Serious psychological distress defined as having a score greater than or equal to 13 on the Kessler 6 (K6) nonspecific distress scale. The six-question K6 was developed to identify persons with a high likelihood of having a diagnosable mental illness and associated functional limitations, using as few questions as possible.) Page 4 of 33