NY Study: Voluntary Mental Health Care Matches AOT Outcomes
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- Involuntary outpatient treatment for serious mental health conditions like schizophrenia has expanded to nearly every U.S. state over the past three decades, even as the evidence for its efficacy has remained murky.
- New York's assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) program reduced hospitalizations, arrests, and other negative outcomes, according to a new independent evaluation.
- Voluntary treatment produced comparable positive results to AOT in the same evaluation, undercutting the case that court-ordered care offers unique benefits.
- The study's authors concluded New York should direct more state funding toward voluntary mental health services, citing reports of coercion and harm experienced under AOT orders.
- Bevin Croft, director of the Human Services Research Institute's Behavioral Health team, said: 'When people are engaged in services, they have better outcomes. Whether or not that engagement is voluntary doesn't seem to make a huge difference.'
Why it matters: With involuntary outpatient programs now operating in nearly every state, this independent New York evaluation suggests voluntary services deliver comparable outcomes — a finding that directly challenges the rationale for expanding court-ordered care and points state mental health budgets toward engagement-based voluntary models instead.
