Assertive Community Treatment Benefits

Outpatient Mental Health Clients Rebuilding Lives

Assertive Community Treatment for mental health problems is a revolution in treatment for more seriously impaired mental health patients. The idea behind the ACT programs came about as doctors began to wonder why so many patients regressed after leaving mental health facilities. After considerable research and study it was determined that a major reason for regression was the loss of the full support team the patient had access to in the hospital.

Once out in the real world at times the patient was not able to functionally navigate to and from the various help centers that had separate offices, often in different geographical locations. This became frustrating for the patient and started a downward cycle of missing appointments and finally just not showing up for reviews and treatments.

Thus the main benefit and idea behind the ACT program is that an entire team is at the call of the patient who is treated as a consumer of the mental health treatment programs the ACT teams can provide. This eliminates the need for the suffering patient to step further out into a world they may again be having problems navigating in.

Patients feel better cared for. Patients feel they are still in contact with the teams and even individuals that helped bring them back to some state or normalcy. Patients have the same complete sets of resources that they had when in a mental hospital except that now they are in the care of their own family except for when they need some special ACT assistance.

ACT uses in patient care only as a last resort thus saving resources of the state for the very worst mental health cases. The ACT teams make contact with ACT consumer clients every day which gives a real sense of security and even belonging to the client/patient.