New report finds that intensive voluntary treatment achieves results similar to court-ordered treatment.

New York law allows involuntary outpatient treatment only if no less restrictive option is available.

New York City appears to be using court-mandated treatment too often and not as a last resort.

Courts in nearly every state have the authority to mandate outpatient treatment for certain individuals with mental illness who have been unwilling or unable to access needed treatment voluntarily. It’s called “Assisted Outpatient Treatment” (or “AOT”).

With Kendra’s Law in 1999, New York State was at the forefront of the national movement to adopt AOT. The policy was controversial then and remains controversial today. Both supporters and opponents are now citing a new, 392-page independent evaluation of AOT in New York. The report compared AOT with a comparable, but voluntary, intensive outpatient program called “Assertive Community Treatment” (or “ACT”).

The Controversy Continues

Supporters of AOT focus on the study’s quantitative results. The executive summary lists four outcomes where AOT did significantly better than ACT, two outcomes where ACT did........

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