Involuntary outpatient treatment (iot) for severe mental patients: current situation in Spain.

Involuntary Outpatient Treatment (IOT) expects to improve treatment compliance and, therefore, prevent the impairment of patients with severe mental illness, as well as the risk for them and others. Besides IOT introduction defenders and opponent's states, scientific literature offers contradictory results. Legislative changes have been taken in the vast majority of our neighbouring countries in order to regulate IOT application.

[Evaluation of the efficacy of involuntary outpatient treatment in reducing the use of mental health services in hospital].

Objective: To determine whether psychiatric patients in involuntary outpatient treatment (IOT) show reduced use of mental health services in hospital compared with a control group not subject to a judicial order.

Method: We compared a group of patients in IOT (n=38) with a control group (n=38), selected from involuntarily hospitalized patients during the same period. Patients in the control group had similar sociodemographic, clinical and psychiatric characteristics to the group with IOT.