Outpatient Commitment: A Competency Based Justification

A recent survey of state statutes for outpatient commitment (Torrey and Kaplan, 1995) indicates that while thirty-five states and the District of Columbia have laws permitting outpatient commitment, Massachusetts is not one of them. Rather, Massachusetts uses a competency-based, substituted-decision-making model for the involuntary administration of medication in the community. To appreciate the Massachusetts model, it is important to understand how this court-ordered involuntary outpatient treatment fits into the overall scheme of outpatient commitment and how it is structured. A review of involuntary outpatient treatment (IOT) literature indicates that it is prudent to distinguish between outpatient commitment, conditional release, and conservatorship-guardianship (Torrey and Kaplan, 1995). Two states whose IOT is based on the guardianship process and is described in the literature are California and New Mexico. Lamb and Weinberger (1992, 1993) have discussed California’s use of guardians for the gravely disabled psychiatric outpatient, and Schneider-Braus (1986) has presented a single case report from New Mexico

The Impact of Suicide Calls on Police

This Issue Brief examines the impact and stressors for police officers of responding to completed suicide calls. The authors present findings from a study of over 225 Massachusetts police officers and offer training recommendations to address mental health needs within the law enforcement community

Temporal Patterns of Arrest in a Cohort of Adults Receiving Mental Health Services: The Massachusetts Mental Health / Criminal Justice Cohort Study

Criminal Justice Involvement among Clientele is a Major Concern for State Mental Health Agencies. Mental health and criminal justice systems provide services at various points along the interface of these systems to reduce offending and re-offending, including: - Diversion programs - Mental Health Courts - Re-Entry Little information about scope of offending to guide service development. This study provides data on the prevalence, type and temporal patterns of arrest for a large sample of adults followed for roughly 9.5 years

Serious Mental Illness and Chronic Crimial Justice Involvement: Findings from The Massachusetts Mental Healthy / Criminal Justice Cohort Study

Presents findings from 1990 through 2000 from The Massachusetts Mental Health/Criminal Justice Cohort Study