mental health courts
Archives of General Psychiatry: Better Outcomes Seen With Mental Health Courts
"Special courts that move people with serious mental illness out of the criminal justice system and into community treatment may lower subsequent arrest rates and jail time, researchers found.
In an analysis of data from four mental health courts, participants had fewer arrests and days of incarceration 18 months after completing court-ordered treatment than did detainees who didn't go through that system, Henry J. Steadman, PhD, of Policy Research Associates in Delmar, N.Y., and colleagues reported online in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
"This first multisite, prospective study of mental health courts offers encouragement that they can achieve the public safety outcomes that funders and the public want," they wrote."
Read more: http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/HealthPolicy/22562
Mental Health Courts Help Psychiatric Patients
"Henry J. Steadman, Ph.D., of Policy Research Associates Inc., Delmar, New York, and colleagues studied four mental health courts in California, Minnesota and Indiana. They compared records from 18 months before and after entering the system for 447 individuals in mental health courts and 600 individuals in the same jurisdictions who were eligible for mental health court but never referred or rejected from it. Participants were interviewed at the time of enrollment in the study and 70 percent were interviewed again six months later."
Read more: Mental Health Courts Help Psychiatric Patients http://www.medindia.net/news/Mental-Health-Courts-Help-Psychiatric-Patie...