But a new Government Accountability Office report suggests those earlier conclusions are not reliable<\/a> because of methodological flaws in how those assessments were made.<\/p>\n \u201cBased on its review, GAO determined that HHS\u2019s assessments were inconclusive,\u201d GAO said. \u201cBoth efforts were hampered by methodological challenges, many of which were inherent in the program and beyond the two agencies\u2019 control.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\tMental health care may be harder to obtain after HHS rule reversal<\/a><\/p>\n The GAO findings come at a time when more states are actively considering involuntary commitment \u2014 assisted outpatient treatment (AOT), as the government calls it \u2014 as a way to address crime and homelessness. Proponents say AOT helps adults live safely in the community without supervision, but the World Health Organization<\/a> and people with lived experience<\/a> have increasingly called into question the ethics and necessity of involuntary treatments, in addition to the unreliability of favorable reports. And in New York City, activists have pointed out racial discrepancies<\/a> in which populations have been nominated for treatment.<\/p>\n The efficacy of AOT is a pressing question for mental health providers and the nearly 15 million adults<\/a> in the United States with a serious mental illness. The GAO review lobs a giant question mark into an ongoing societal discussion of whether more federal dollars should fund a controversial treatment option \u2014 especially for a population facing worsening health outcomes, increased medical costs, and higher rates of involvement with the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n \u201cThe GAO report underscores that assessments of assisted outpatient treatment programs\/involuntary outpatient commitment remain inconclusive,\u201d said Sakeena Trice, a senior staff attorney on New York Lawyers for Public Interest\u2019s Disability Justice team. \u201cTo protect civil rights and address racial disparities in implementation, mental health care and policy should shift toward culturally competent, community-based voluntary care that centers the lived experiences of those impacted.\u201d<\/p>\n AOT typically consists of a judge mandating that a person with a serious mental illness adhere to treatment for a given time period. Health providers often petition the court for this, but it can also be parole officers, parents \u2014 in New York, even a roommate can lobby<\/a> a judge for treatment. But many of the particulars in eligibility, methods, and timelines vary widely among states. The GAO report cites this heterogeneity as one of the main reasons for calling earlier federal reports \u201cinconclusive.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Also, much of the patient outcome data were gathered by staff interviewing patients, who may be hesitant to candidly answer questions on sensitive topics such as substance use.<\/p>\n \t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\tA polarizing New York policy to treat people with mental illness is ineffective and racially biased, study finds<\/a><\/p>\n Program variability and self-reported bias were not the only hindrances toward acquiring good data. In a 2024 report<\/a> by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, many of the AOT programs that were awarded federal grants in the last decade actually accepted voluntary participants as part of their treatment programs. The GAO review suggests that this inclusion undermined the ASPE\u2019s rosy results and reduced the agency\u2019s ability to \u201cassess the core concept of AOT.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Furthermore, the ASPE report\u2019s conclusion that people with repeated inpatient psychiatric hospitalizations are better suited to AOT than to voluntary treatment is based on data from a single program. The GAO review cautions against using this report and two similar reports from another federal agency as a policymaking tool. The authors suggest that these research challenges are inherent to the widespread implementation of AOT programs and are unlikely to fade as states like New York<\/a> and California expand eligibility in their programs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the last decade, the federal government has provided $146 million to organizations that provide outpatient care to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[347,105,69136,218,6738,46,1093,2343,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-265419","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-disability","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-hhs","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-patients","13":"tag-policy","14":"tag-public-health","15":"tag-research","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114854143573567656","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/AdobeStock_1081747428-768x432.jpeg\")
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