It is the progressive deterioration of an individual's adaptive behaviors, coping capacities, and identity coherence that occurs as a direct and measurable consequence of prolonged or repeated exposure to institutional systems characterized by dehumanizing documentation requirements, bureaucratic fragmentation, coercive gatekeeping, deficit-oriented assessment, surveillance-heavy relationships, and episodic rather than continuous engagement. 

SIBD is distinguished from individual psychopathology by its proximate causal attribution: the system, not the person, is the primary agent of deterioration.