No. Inpatient hospitalization will still be needed for those incapable of surviving safely in the community. Assisted outpatient treatment facilitates early short-term rehospitalization for those noncompliant and likely to become dangerous.

No. Assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) is designed to help people function successfully out of the hospital. It helps those with a history of noncompliance with medications to adhere to a treatment plan and helps prevent them from decompensating and becoming rehospitalized. For example, participants in New York’s AOT program, Kendra’s Law, experienced a 77 percent decrease in psychiatric hospitalizations while in the program, as compared to the three years prior to AOT.

least 40% of the 4.5 million people in the United States who are diagnosed with either schizophrenia or manic-depression, the two severest forms of mental illness, do not and cannot realize they are sick because the illness affects their brain's frontal-lobe function, which is necessary to make that determination. Because they do not know they are sick, they refuse medication and often deteriorate.

Epilepsy is not a mental illness. It is a temporary change in the electrical function of an otherwise normal brain. Some people with mental illness also have seizures, and some people with seizures also have mental illness, but the two conditions are not the same.

Health care professionals have differing opinions on the effectiveness of medication to treat mental illness. There are treatment facilities like The San Joaquin Psychotherapy Center, www.breggin.com/sjpc.html, and Golden State Psychological Health Center in San Francisco, www.gsphc.net, that advocate for medication-free treatment for many mental health illnesses. Mental illness is a medical illness. A person does not simply "get over" mental illness without some form of treatment.

Assisted outpatient treatment (also called things like involuntary outpatient commitment or mandated community treatment) promotes availability and accessibility for those that are most at risk. It allows the courts to order outpatient treatment for people with severe mental illnesses who are least able to help themselves or most likely to present a risk to others, giving family members and the mental health community a tool to help very sick people who cannot make their own medical decisions.

In 1999, the Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Health reported that “a subpopulation of 5.4 percent of adults is considered to have a ‘serious’ mental illness (SMI)” and “about half of those with SMI (or 2.6 percent of all adults) were identified as being even more seriously affected, that is, by having ‘severe and persistent’ mental illness (SPMI).

Assisted treatment is not expensive because it does not mandate any services that individuals with brain disorders are not already entitled to (example: case management, medications, rehabilitation). Assisted outpatient treatment orders merely require the system to facilitate compliance for non-compliant individuals by giving them the services they need to keep well and the surrounding community safe.

Yes. Forty-two states and the District of Columbia have assisted outpatient treatment laws– some almost 20 years old. The U.S. Supreme Court has not overturned any of these laws. the state level, AOT laws have been upheld wherever challenged. For instance, Kendra’s Law in New York has been upheld through a series of challenges. With the latest ruling In the Matter of K.L.

Beginning in 1955 with the widespread introduction of the first, effective antipsychotic medication chlorpromazine, or Thorazine, the stage was set for moving patients out of hospital settings. The pace of deinstitutionalization accelerated significantly following the enactment of Medicaid and Medicare a decade later. There was a wholesale emptying of state psychiatric hospitals in the mid-1960s and another wave of discharges in the early 1990s.

Though medications can often aid in the treatment of mental illness, it is unlikely that taking medication as the sole form of treatment will be effective in "getting over" or stabilizing one's mental illness. Professionals generally recommend therapy along with medications to manage mental illness most effectively.

Every state has a law supporting assisted outpatient treatment except for eight - Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Tennessee. See TAC's state-by-state summary (also in PDF) for more details and relevant code sections.

The term "co-occurring disorders" refers to the presence of two or more illnesses or disorders in a person at the same time. An estimated 10 million people who have substance use disorders have a co-occurring mental illness. Mental health and addiction treatment professionals face the daunting task of recognizing the additional condition or conditions, referring the individual to the proper provider for diagnosis of the co-occurring condition, and ensuring care coordination.

When undergoing treatment, people with severe mental illnesses are no more dangerous than the general population. When untreated, this is no longer the case. Anecdotally, incidences of violence appear in our newspapers every day. The relative risk of violence is higher for severely mentally ill patients (specifically those with diagnoses involving psychoses) than for the general public.

Depending on the type and severity of the mental illness, a person can learn to cope, improve or experience a full recovery with proper care and treatment. As many as eight in ten people suffering from mental illness can effectively return to normal, productive lives. Anti-depressant medications help reverse the symptoms of depression in 80-90 percent of those who receive treatment.

Approximately 4.5 million individuals in the United States have severe mental illness, either schizophrenia or manic-depressive illness (bipolar disorder).

Current federal and state policies hinder treatment for psychiatrically ill individuals who are most at risk for homelessness, arrest, or suicide. As a result, 40% of the 4.5 million individuals with schizophrenia and manic-depressive illness (bipolar disorder), an estimated 1.6 million people, are not being treated for their illness at any given time.

People with untreated psychiatric illnesses comprise one-third, or 200,000 people, of the estimated 600,000 homeless population. The quality of life for these individuals is abysmal. Many are victimized regularly. One study has found that 28 percent of homeless people with previous psychiatric hospitalizations obtained some food from garbage cans and eight percent used garbage cans as a primary food source. These 200,000 individuals comprise more than the entire population of many U.S.

People with untreated serious brain disorders comprise approximately 16 percent of the total jail and prison inmate population, or nearly 300,000 individuals. These individuals are often incarcerated with misdemeanor charges, but sometimes with felony charges, caused by their psychotic thinking. People with untreated psychiatric illnesses spend twice as much time in jail than non-ill individuals and are more likely to commit suicide. More ...

A mentally ill individual who does not comply with his/her treatment plan can deteriorate, lose the ability to make rational decisions, and become dangerous in the future. After a petition is filed, a hearing is set where a Judge would be able to order an individual into treatment Assisted Outpatient Treatment - if he/she demonstrates noncompliance.

Suicide is the number one cause of premature death among people with schizophrenia, with an estimated 10 percent to 13 percent killing themselves. Suicide is even more pervasive in individuals with bipolar disorder, with 15 percent to 17 percent taking their own lives. The extreme depression and psychoses that can result due to lack of treatment are the usual causes of death. These suicides rates can be compared to the general population, which is somewhere around 1 percent.

Again the answer is “of course”. In fact I have found, working with hundreds of people with mental health issues, that the greater difficulty with them is that they are too honest.

Yes -- almost every mental illness has some form of treatment. For some it's medication, for others it's therapy; often, it's a combination of both. Different people may have different reactions to the same treatment, so sometimes people must try several different things before finding something that works. Not all kinds of mental illness can be permanently 'cured'; but almost all can be treated so that the person can live a happier and more productive life.