Delays in commitment and treatment court proceedings worsen psychiatric and other medical conditions.

Objective: Adversarial hearings in hospital commitment and de novo treatment proceedings, or court hearings, delay psychiatric treatment in many jurisdictions. In Massachusetts, the "treatment over objection" process requires a court petition. For state hospital patients, the delay to treatment is an initial 34 day waiting period in addition to continuances of court hearings that extend treatment delays.

Burden of proof: the evidence clinicians require before implementing an intervention.

Background: Greater implementation of evidence-based practice for children and adolescents is a current emphasis in the mental health field; however, there is a need to understand how best to disseminate these interventions and convince community clinicians to use them.

Method: A sample of 255 clinicians reported on the likelihood that they would use an intervention given various types of evidence.

Results: Case studies and clinical trials with an active or placebo control group scored as the most preferred types of evidence; however, more positive attitudes toward evidence-based practice predicted preferences for clinical trials, but were not related to case studies.