ABSTRACT
In its pilot program thirty years ago at the Mendota Mental Health Institute, Madison, Wisconsin, the original Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) team was set up by clinicians and researchers during the era of deinstitutionalization. With the widespread release of persons with mental disabilities into community settings during the 1970s and 1980s, the policy of deinstitutionalization in the American mental health care delivery system created tremendous change at both the micro and macro levels of mental health care. ACT teams consist of members from the fields of psychiatry, nursing, and social work, as well as professionals with other types of expertise, such as substance abuse treatment and vocational rehabilitation. ACT represents the most empirically studied community mental health approach available, with over 30 controlled research studies demonstrating that ACT teams reduce hospitalization rates, increase housing stability, and improve the quality of life for persons whose needs have not been met in traditional office-based treatment facilities and rehabilitation services.
