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ASSISTED OUTPATIENT TREATMENT

• "Involuntary outpatient care is an innovative answer to the deinstitutionalization of the severely mentally ill who cannot or will not care for themselves."
  (Meloy, Reid J., et al, Clinical Guidelines for Involuntary Outpatient Treatment, Professional Resource Exchange, Inc. 1990, pg. 64)

• "Involuntary outpatient commitment (OPC) is a civil justice procedure intended to enhance compliance with community mental health treatment, to improve functioning, and to reduce recurrent dangerousness and hospital recidivism. The research literature on OPC indicates that it appears to improve outcomes in rates of rehospitalization and length of stay."

(Swartz, MS et al, The ethical challenges of a randomized controlled trial of involuntary outpatient commitment, Journal of Mental Health Adm., 24 (1):35-43, 1997 Winter)

• "Patients who were committed to outpatient treatment were significantly more likely…to utilize aftercare services and to continue in treatment."
  (Hiday, Virginia; Scheid-Cook, Teresa, A Follow-up of Chronic Patients Committed to Outpatient Treatment, Hospital and Community Psychiatry, January 1989, Vol. 40, No. 1)

• "Outpatient commitment appears to improve compliance with treatment in about 80% of patients."
  (Rohland, Barbara, The Role of Outpatient Commitment in the Management of Persons with Schizophrenia, Report, Iowa Consortium for Mental Health Services, Training, and Research, May 1998)

• "…outpatient commitment induces compliance and leads to treatment maintenance even after the court order terminates."
  (Hiday, Scheid-Cook, "Outpatient Commitment for "Revolving Door" Patients: Compliance and Treatment, The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 1991, Vol. 179, No. 2)

• "…the percentage of patients who voluntarily maintained an active relationship with community treatment centers six months after commitment increased significantly after outpatient commitment was instituted."
  ( Robert A. Van Putten, M.D.; Jose M. Santiago, M.D.; and Michael R. Berren, Ph.D., Hospital and Community Psychiatry (vol. 39, no. 9, pp. 953-958), September, 1988 )

• "OPC works in terms of keeping patients in treatment and on medication, increasing compliance, permitting residence outside an institution and social interaction outside the home, and maintaining patients in the community with few dangerous episodes."
  (Hiday, V, Scheid-Cook, T, The North Carolina Experience with Outpatient Commitment: A critical Appraisal, International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, Vol. 10, 215-231, 1987

• "…the sustained use of OPC and aggressive services provision act synergistically, especially in psychotically disordered individuals, to improve these outcomes."
  (Swartz, Marvin, et al, Can Involuntary Outpatient Commitment Reduce Hospital Recidivism? Findings from a Randomized Trial With Severely Mentally Ill Individuals, Am J Psychiatry 1566:12, Dec. 1999)

• "Positive improvements were found in all areas of functioning with the most consistent effects for medication compliance, substance abuse, and violence."
  (O’Keefe, et al, Treatment Outcomes for Severely Mentally Ill Patients Conditionally Discharged to Community Based Treatment, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, 185:409-411, 1997)

• "One criticism remained. The law was letting a needy group slip through its cracks. …the state legislature designed the outpatient commitment law (OPC) to fill the cracks in the statute through which this needy group had fallen…The data indicate that OPC is successful."
  (Hiday, V, Scheid-Cook, T, The North Carolina Experience with Outpatient Commitment: A critical Appraisal, International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, Vol. 10, 215-231, 1987)

• "PRA found that the court orders provided a structure around which providers and patients constantly negotiated the terms of treatment…therefore assist in soliciting patient compliance in the community and preventing relapse."
  (Telson, H., et al, Report of the Bellevue Hospital Center Outpatient Commitment Pilot Program, March 1, 1999)

• "According to this model, court-mandated outpatient treatment may improve long-term outcomes both directly and indirectly in several ways: by stimulating case management efforts, mobilizing supportive resources, improving individual compliance with treatment in the community, reducing clients’ psychiatric symptoms and dangerous behavior, improving clients’ social functioning, and finally be reducing the chance of illness relapse and rehospitalization."
  (Swanson, et al, Interpreting the effectiveness of involuntary outpatient commitment, a conceptual model, Journal of American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 25 (1):5-16, 1997)

For more information call Carla Jacobs at 562-438-4174

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