Involuntary Outpatient Commitment, Community Treatment Orders, and Assisted Outpatient Treatment: What's in the Data?

Involuntary outpatient commitment, community treatment orders, and assisted outpatient treatment: what's in the data?

OBJECTIVE Involuntary outpatient commitment (OPC), also referred to as community treatment orders or assisted outpatient treatment, is a legal intervention intended to improve treatment adherence among persons with serious mental illness. This paper reviews the empirical literature on the procedure's effectiveness. METHODS We identified and reviewed all English-language studies of OPC and rel...

Involuntary outpatient treatment: the data and controversy

Involuntary Outpatient Commitment, also referred to as Assisted Outpatient Treatment or Community Treatment Orders, are controversial civil court procedures whereby judges may order non-adherent mentally ill individuals to comply with treatment. This presentation will summarize the data and controversy about these procedures and put them in the context of the larger debate about the use of coer...

Mandated community treatment: beyond outpatient commitment.

Outpatient commitment, although often viewed as merely an extension of inpatient commitment, is only one of a growing array of legal tools used to mandate treatment adherence. The authors describe various forms of mandated community treatment. People with severe and chronic mental disorders often depend on goods and services provided by the social welfare system. Benefits disbursed by represent...

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