Assertive Community Treatment Model
The Assertive Community Treatment model of care was created from the work of Arnold Marx, M.D., Leonard Stein, and Mary Ann Test, Ph.D., in the late 1960s. Assertive Community Treatment is a service-delivery model is a team treatment approach that provides community based psychiatric treatment for individuals with mental illness. The Assertive Community Treatment model provides an individualized program for the individual this service offers therapy, rehabilitation and support services. This model does not connect individuals to mental health, housing, or rehabilitation agencies or services like other mental health models do, rather they provide an individualize service directly to the individual. The Assertive Community treatment model involves
of a collection of professionals from different areas of the mental health field, these include members from psychiatry, nursing, psychology, social work, substance abuse and vocational support programs. Assertive Community Treatment services offers a wide-ranging and flexible treatment, and support, services to individuals in a community setting as oppose to a hospital or clinical settings used in traditional mental health services. Assertive Community Treatment services provide team members to assist the individuals where they live, they work, and where the individual feel the supports are required. ACT teams share responsibility for the people they serve and use assertive engagement to proactively engage individuals in treatment. ACT interventions are paced and ongoing. Services are tailored to each individual and are available around the clock, and the client-to-staff ratio is low ACT strives to lessen or eliminate the debilitating symptoms of mental illness each individual client experiences and to minimize or prevent recurrent acute episodes of the illness, to meet basic needs and enhance quality of life, to improve functioning in adult social and employment roles, to enhance an individual's ability to live independently in his or her own community, and to lessen the family's burden of providing care. ACT improves recipient outcomes. When comparing recipients before and after receiving ACT services, studies have shown ACT recipients experience greater reductions in psychiatric hospitalization rates, emergency room visits and higher levels of housing stability after receiving ACT services..
of a collection of professionals from different areas of the mental health field, these include members from psychiatry, nursing, psychology, social work, substance abuse and vocational support programs. Assertive Community Treatment services offers a wide-ranging and flexible treatment, and support, services to individuals in a community setting as oppose to a hospital or clinical settings used in traditional mental health services. Assertive Community Treatment services provide team members to assist the individuals where they live, they work, and where the individual feel the supports are required. ACT teams share responsibility for the people they serve and use assertive engagement to proactively engage individuals in treatment. ACT interventions are paced and ongoing. Services are tailored to each individual and are available around the clock, and the client-to-staff ratio is low ACT strives to lessen or eliminate the debilitating symptoms of mental illness each individual client experiences and to minimize or prevent recurrent acute episodes of the illness, to meet basic needs and enhance quality of life, to improve functioning in adult social and employment roles, to enhance an individual's ability to live independently in his or her own community, and to lessen the family's burden of providing care. ACT improves recipient outcomes. When comparing recipients before and after receiving ACT services, studies have shown ACT recipients experience greater reductions in psychiatric hospitalization rates, emergency room visits and higher levels of housing stability after receiving ACT services..