Classifying mental retardation and specific strength and deficit areas in severe and profoundly mentally retarded persons with the MESSIER.

The team tested the MESSIER tool on adults with severe and profound intellectual disability.

They wanted to see if MESSIER could sort people into the same severity groups that doctors using DSM-IV-TR already placed them in.

The study looked only at adults living in large state facilities.

MESSIER matched the doctor-made DSM labels 86% of the time for severe ID and 80% for profound ID.

That level of agreement is strong enough to trust the tool for daily use.

Keintz et al. (2011) extends this work. They showed that behavior-rating scores also differ between severe and profound groups, so mixing the groups can hide real differences.

Singh et al. (1991) came first. They urged clinicians to use many methods—history, interviews, rating scales, and short tests—before picking any label. MESSIER now gives one clear instrument that follows that advice.

Kleinert et al. (2007) used the same check-against-DSM method. They built the MASS Interview to spot mood and anxiety disorders in the same population, showing the DSM-match approach works for both severity and mental-health tools.

You now have a quick, standardized way to confirm if an adult client has severe or profound ID. Use MESSIER at intake to place people in the right day program, set realistic skill goals, and keep research groups clean.