Involuntary out-patient commitment and supervised discharge

Impact of involuntary out-patient commitment on reducing hospital services: 2-year follow-up

Aims and method To evaluate whether involuntary out-patient commitment (OPC) in patients with severe mental disorder reduces their use of hospital services. This is a retrospective case-control study comparing a group of patients on OPC (n = 75) and a control group (n = 75) which was composed of patients whose sociodemographic variables and clinical characteristics were similar to those of the ...

Effectiveness of involuntary outpatient commitment.

To the Editor: Having observed patient progress during conditional release (a form of involuntary outpatient commitment) and found the policy useful in protecting some individuals with serious mental illness, I anticipated positive results from the randomized clinical trial by Dr. Swartz et al. The investigators randomly assigned patients released from a mental hospital to one of two conditions...

Involuntary Outpatient Commitment: Current Evidence and Options

Use of summons in involuntary civil commitment.

Washington state provides a number of mechanisms through which mentally ill individuals may be involuntarily committed. One method that has drawn considerable attention of late is a procedure whereby individuals may be summoned to an evaluation and treatment facility for 72 hours· by a county-designated mental health professional (CDMHP) in nonemergency circumstances. The issuance of a summons ...

Voluntary "involuntary" commitment--the briar-patch syndrome.

Szasz and others have pointed out that many so-called voluntary admissions to mental hospitals have various elements of coercion involved, and are thus not truly voluntary. The author contends that the converse situation is also true, that many patients admitted under involuntary commitment papers arrange for their own commitments. Reasons for such choices are discussed in the context of a revi...