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Impact of diagnosis on outcomes for compulsory treatment orders in New Zealand

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2022

Ben Beaglehole*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Otago, Christchurch, New Zealand
Giles Newton-Howes
Affiliation:
Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Otago, Wellington, New Zealand
Richard Porter
Affiliation:
Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Otago, Christchurch, New Zealand
Chris Frampton
Affiliation:
Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Otago, Christchurch, New Zealand
*
Correspondence: Ben Beaglehole. Email: ben.beaglehole@otago.ac.nz
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Abstract

Background

Compulsory community treatment orders (CTOs) are controversial because they enforce psychiatric treatment of patients in the community. It is important to know which patients benefit from compulsory treatment to better inform CTO use.

Aims

To examine the effect of a range of diagnoses on outcomes associated with CTOs to determine whether there are specific outcome signatures for CTOs according to diagnosis.

Method

New Zealand's Ministry of Health databases provided demographic, service use and medication-dispensing data for all individuals placed on a CTO between 2009 and 2018. We used a hierarchical approach to categorise individuals according to diagnosis. Admission rates, admission days per year, community care and medication dispensing were analysed according to diagnosis and CTO status.

Results

In total, 14 726 patients were placed on a CTO over the 10-year period between 1 January 2009 and 31 December 2018. For psychotic disorders, CTOs were associated with reduced admission frequency and duration. However, the opposite occurred for dementia disorders, bipolar disorders, major depressive disorder and personality disorders. Higher rates of medications, including depot antipsychotic medications, were dispensed on CTOs for all diagnostic groups.

Conclusions

CTOs were associated with reduced admission frequency and admission days per year for patients with psychotic disorders, whereas the opposite occurred for other diagnostic groups. Rather than seeking to establish whether CTOs are effective, we suggest that there are specific outcome signatures associated with CTOs for different disorders and knowledge of these can improve understanding and clinical practice in this area.

Information

Type
Papers
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Royal College of Psychiatrists
Figure 0

Table 1 Characteristics of the study population according to diagnosis

Figure 1

Table 2 Rate ratios of key outcomes according to diagnostic group

Figure 2

Fig. 1 Rate ratio of admission frequency according to diagnostic group. Error bars represent 95% CIs; the horizontal line highlights RR = 1.

Figure 3

Table 3 Rate ratio of psychiatric medication dispensing according to diagnostic grouping

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