Evidence
"community mental health services"
Nurses and assertive community treatment teams: A critical combination.
This commentary discusses the critical role that nurses play on ACT teams and ACT as a platform to integrate physical and mental health. It also reviews issues that may affect nursing shortages on ACT teams.
Cuddeback, G., & Shatell, M. (2010). Nurses and assertive community treatment teams: A critical combination. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 31, 751-752. doi: 10.3109/01612840.2010.518338
Client perspectives on helpful ingredients of assertive community treatment.
This is the first published article on the helpful ingredients of ACT from the client perspective. This study had ACT clients from six assertive community treatment (ACT) programs describe features they liked best about ACT. Clients mentioned non-specific ingredients most frequently (e.g., relationships with case managers); somewhat less frequently they mentioned ingredients considered by experts as integral to the ACT model (e.g, staff availability, home visits). Although ACT services differ in many ways from traditional counseling or psychotherapy, client-identified best aspects of ACT focused more strongly on features of the helping relationship that have been found to be important for counseling in general.
Keywords:
psychotherapy
client satisfaction
community mental health services
mental disorders
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McGrew, J.H., Wilson, R.G., & Bond, G.R. (1996). Client perspectives on helpful ingredients of assertive community treatment. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, 19(3), 13-21.
Transforming assertive community treatment into an integrated care system: The role of nursing and primary care partnerships
This article argues that ACT is an ideal platform to provide both primary and behavioural health care to those with complex service needs. This article considers the transformation of the ACT mental health care model into an integrated health care delivery system by expanding and explicitly redefining the role of the ACT nurse to include establishing partnerships with primary care providers.
Keywords:
primary care
primary health care
chronic mental illness
community mental health services
service delivery systems
nurses
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Weinstein, L., Henwood, B., Cody, J., Jordan, M. & Lelar, R. (2011). Transforming assertive community treatment into an integrated care system: The role of nursing and primary care partnerships. Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association, 17, 64-71.
Models of community care for severe mental illness: A review of research on case management.
Reviews results of 75 studies of community care for consumers and compares the effectiveness of ACT and intensive case management.
Keywords:
effectiveness of act
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intensive case management
community mental health services
schizophrenia/rehabilitation
schizophrenic psychology
case management
Mueser, K. T., Bond, G. R., & Drake, R. E. (1998). Models of community care for severe mental illness: A review of research on case management. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 24, 37-74.
Assertive community treatment and the physical health needs of persons with severe mental illness: issues around integration of mental health and physical health.
This article involves a qualitative study that included five ACT teams and the level that they integrate mental health and physical health. The results of this qualitative study show three main themes (1) all ACT teams recognized serious and chronic physical health problems among consumers they served, (2) ACT teams took a variety of roles to address the physical health problems of their consumers, and (3) there were a number of challenges to integrating primary and mental health care within an ACT setting. The main conclusion is that ACT is well positioned to integrate physical health and mental health care and ACT staff expressed the need, desire, and willingness to integrate physical health care with mental health care.
Shattell, M., Donnelly, N., Scheyett, A., & Cuddeback, G. (2011). Assertive community treatment and the physical health needs of persons with severe mental illness: Issues around integration of mental health and physical health. Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association, 17 (1), 57-63. doi: 10.1177/1078390310393737
Program fidelity in Assertive Community Treatment: development and use of a measure.
Describes the development of the Dartmouth Assertive Community Treatment Scale (DACTS) and the results of applying it to 50 diverse programs.
Keywords:
critical ingredients
community mental health services
deinstitutionalization
psychotic disorders/rehabilitation
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Teague, G. B., Bond, G. R., & Drake, R. E. (1998). Program fidelity in Assertive Community Treatment: development and use of a measure. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 68, 216-232.
Assertive Community Treatment: An update of randomized trials.
Reviews outcomes of randomized controlled trials of ACT including studies of special populations (i.e., homeless, dual diagnoses).
Keywords:
effectiveness of act
community mental health services
schizophrenia rehabilition
schizophrenia psychology
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Burns, B. J. & Santos, A. B. (1995). Assertive Community Treatment: An update of randomized trials. Psychiatric Services, 46, 669-675.