For Adults Assertive Community Treatment

Program Description

Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) is a trans-disciplinary team approach that assumes responsibility for directly providing acute, active and ongoing community-based clinical services, psychiatric treatment, assertive outreach, rehabilitation and support.

The program team provides assistance to individuals to maximize their recovery, ensure consumer-directed goal setting, assist the persons served to gain hope and a sense of empowerment and provide assistance in helping the persons served become respected and valued members of their community. The program provides psychosocial services directed to adults with severe and persistent mental illness who often have co-occurring problems such as substance abuse or are homeless or involved with the judicial system.

The team is the single point of clinical responsibility and is accountable for assisting the person served to meet his or her needs and to achieve his or her goals for recovery. Multiple members of the team are familiar with each person served to ensure the timely and continuous provision of services. The majority of services are provided directly by ACT team members, with minimal referral to outside providers, in the natural environment of the person served. These services are available 24 hours a day, 7 days per week. Services are comprehensive and highly individualized and are modified as needed through an ongoing assessment and treatment planning process. Services vary in intensity based on the needs of the person served.

Program Philosophy

• Recovery is building a sense of self that is not illness dominated.
• Recovery is an integrated and comprehensive process.
• Work and education generate purpose and accomplishment, which in turn, create connections to the community.
• Medication can be a powerful tool when informed individuals join with empowering physicians to choose treatments that will effectively maximize functioning.

Criteria for Selection

Criteria for selection is based on the operational definition of serious mental illness from OMHSAS Service Area Plan Guidelines which include adults with a serious mental illness age 18 and over, whom currently or at any time during the past year, have had a diagnosable mental, behavioral or emotional disorder of sufficient duration to meet DSM-III-R criteria, that has resulted in functional impairment which substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities.

Criteria for Selection Include Persons with a:

• Primary diagnosis of Schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders such as schizoaffective disorder or bipolar disorder, as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV-R or any subsequent revisions thereafter). Individuals with a primary diagnosis of a substance use disorder, mental retardation, or brain injury are not the intended consumer group.
• Significant functional impairment; and persons who are high utilizers of health care resources, having received mental health services (including hospitalization), having been incarcerated or homeless within the past year.
• Functional impairment that substantially interferes with or limits role functioning in one or more major life activities, including basic daily living skills, instrumental living skills, taking medication, and functioning in social, family or vocational/educational contexts.

Services

• Assessments
• Client Centered Treatment Plan
• Medication Management, Medication Distribution
• Individual and Group Supportive Therapies
• Service Coordination, Co-Occurring Disorder Services
• Vocational-Related Service
• Activities of Daily Living
• Social/Interpersonal Relationship and Leisure-Time Skill Training
• Peer Support Services
• Crisis/Diversion Services