Preventing Psychiatric Hospitalization and Involuntary Outpatient Commitment Preventing Psychiatric Hospitalization S. P. Segal and P. Burgess

Over the course of a decade in Victoria, Australia, this study considered how, for whom, under what circumstances, and with what consequences for a patient’s treatment career involuntary outpatient commitment was used to prevent psychiatric hospitalization. Records were obtained from the Victorian Psychiatric Case Register for patients with career hospitalizations, 8,879 exposed to outpatient orders. Descriptive statistics and logistic regression were used to determine the characteristics of patients solely selected for placement on orders directly from the community, in lieu of re-hospitalization, versus patients selected for placement on orders only from the hospital or for those who experienced both hospital and communityinitiated orders. Ordinary least squares regression was used to evaluate the relationship of sole reliance on community-initiated orders and experienced changes in future hospital utilization. Outpatient orders were infrequently issued directly from the community by comparison with orders issued at termination of inpatient episodes. Patients whose placements on orders were carried out only through direct community placement differed from those whose