Tautology and Coercion in Assertive Community Treatment (ACT)

Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) has been identified as one of only six evidence-based practices for the severely mentally ill by federal, private foundation, and professional mental health experts. This article reviews the research of the inventors of ACT (the Madison Wisconsin ACT group) because their model is the criterion for all ACT replications. The focus is on the well known, but mysterious “disappearance” of ACT effect when ACT “interventions” cease. The analysis concludes provocatively that there is no ACT clinical effect in the first place. What actually is measured by these researchers and claimed incorrectly as “clinical” treatment effect is the artifactual residue of a combination of tautological administrative rules and coercive bureaucratic tools (e.g. “financial payee” mechanisms).