Assertive Community Treatment (ACT)

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Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) is an evidenced based program designed for individuals with serious mental health disorders. A team of professionals, including: nurses; psychiatrists; case managers; substance abuse counselors; and social workers oversees the client’s care (Assertive Community Treatment, 2011). Clients can reach a member of the team twenty-four hours a day. The team helps the clients overcome obstacles in their everyday lives. For example: housing; education; paying bills; appointments; food shopping and many more (Assertive Community Treatment. 2011). This paper will discuss: the development of ACT; the target population; structure and components of the program; barriers to implementing; and how ACT can aid in recovery. …show more content…

Individuals with mental disorders were let out into the community without a specific plan or system in place (Drake, 1998). Many individuals, with mental illness, did not have the knowledge or understanding how to navigate the broken mental health system outside of institutions and ended up incarcerated or homeless (Furlong, Leddy, Ferguson, & Heart, 2009). As a result, the need for case management, diverse practitioners, and integrated services in the 1970’s led to the development of Program of Assertive Community Treatment (PACT) in Madison, Wisconsin by Test and Stein (Drake, 1998). Test and Stein realized that community based services lacked the effectiveness of inpatient care services. Frequently, client’s mental health would decline with out- patient care leading to re-hospitalizations (SAMSHA, 2008). They wanted clients to have a better quality of life and be able to integrate into the community (SAMSHA, 2008). For this reason, the PACT team implemented low caseload to be shared by providers from different disciplines (SAMSHA, 2008). PACT’s objective was to help reduce high rates of hospitalization and homelessness of individuals with serious mental illness (Furlong, et al., 2009). The ACT model is the derivation of PACT (Drake, …show more content…

According to Furlong, et al., 2009, in 2006, 49% of clients engaged with an ACT team at Thresholds lived independently, 87% of members had no hospitalizations, and over seven percent were employed (Furlong, et al., 2009). Fidelity of five of the ACT teams at Thresholds was measured by the Dartmouth Assertive Community Scale (DACTS), a 28 item instrument, which measures a team’s adherence to the ACT model on a rating scale of one through five (1 = not

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