Assertive Community Treatment
Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) is a multidisciplinary team approach that assumes responsibility for directly providing acute, active, and ongoing community-based 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 primarily 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. Services are provided on a long-term care basis with continuity of caregivers over time. 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 and 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 persons served.
Assertive Community Treatment has been identified as an effective model for providing community-based services for persons whose needs and goals have not been met through traditional office-based treatment and rehabilitation services. Desired outcomes specific to ACT services may include positive change in the following areas: community tenure, independent living, quality of life, consumer satisfaction of the person served, functioning in work and social domains, community integration, psychological condition, subjective well-being, and the ability to manage his or her own healthcare.
In certain geographic areas, Assertive Community Treatment programs may be called Community Support programs, Intensive Community Treatment programs, Mobile Community Treatment Teams, or Assertive Outreach Teams.