ABSTRACT
Community treatment orders (CTOs) are legal orders, provided for within mental health legislation, that are made by clinicians or tribunals. CTOs set out the terms under which a person with a mental illness must accept treatment or other services while living in the community. Despite being widely used internationally, this avenue for involuntary treatment remains controversial. This chapter, combining the perspectives of researchers from three different disciplines – law, psychiatry and social work – examines and attempts to make sense of that controversy. It considers to what extent CTOs are compatible with human rights, to what extent they are effective, and their impact on individuals and healthcare systems. We conclude that CTOs, at least as they are typically constructed, are incompatible with human rights principles and that the evidence for their efficacy is mixed evidence at best. We demonstrate that social and structural issues are being played out in CTO implementation and briefly examine potential alternatives.
