Biomedical subjects

Pamela Clark Robbins

Publications and source records attributed to Pamela Clark Robbins.

11 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

The use of housing as leverage to increase adherence to psychiatric treatment in the community.

For people with mental disorder, access to subsidized housing may be used as "leverage" to obtain adherence to treatment. Interview data from 200 outpatients at each of five sites provided the first national description of the use of housing as leverage. Results indicated that housing is most likely to be used as leverage when it is "special" housing, available only to people with mental illness. Most frequently, respondents state that the requirement that they participate in treatment is imposed by their landlord, rather than by a clinician. The use of housing as leverage strongly increases respondents' perceptions of coercion. Despite this, however, participants who experience housing as leverage are no less satisfied than other participants with the treatment that they receive, and are much more likely than other participants to believe that using housing as leverage is effective in helping people stay well.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

The classification of violence risk.

The Classification of Violence Risk (COVR) is an interactive software program designed to estimate the risk that a person hospitalized for mental disorder will be violent to others. The software leads the evaluator through a chart review and a brief interview with the patient. At the end of this interview, the software generates a report that contains a statistically valid estimate of the patient's violence risk-ranging from a 1% to a 76% likelihood of violence-including the confidence interval for that estimate, and a list of the risk factors that the program took into account to produce the estimate. In this article, the development of the COVR software is described and several issues that arise in its administration are discussed.

Antisocial Personality Disorder↗

PubMed2006

Patterns of practice in mental health courts: A national survey.

Mental health courts (MHCs) represent an important new development at the interface of the criminal justice and mental health systems. MHCs are criminal courts for persons with mental illness that were in part created to divert this population from jail/prison into community treatment. MHCs are proliferating rapidly despite limited knowledge regarding their characteristics or their efficacy. We surveyed the entire population of adult MHCs in the United States, n = 90. In the past 8 years, MHCs have been created in 34 states, with an aggregate current caseload of 7,560 clients in MHCs nationally. Most courts (92%) reported using jail as a sanction for noncompliance, if only rarely. Further, jail sanction use was significantly predicted by increased judicial supervision and number of felons in the court. Implications for MHCs and social monitoring are discussed.

Humans↗

PubMed2006

Use of the criminal justice system to leverage mental health treatment: effects on treatment adherence and satisfaction.

In efforts to divert persons with mental illness from jails and prisons, the option of community mental health treatment in lieu of incarceration is sometimes offered. In addition, community treatment can be mandated, or "leveraged," as a condition of probation or parole. However, little is known about the characteristics and attitudes of persons who are and who are not leveraged into community mental health treatment via the criminal justice (CJ) system. In the present study, over 1,000 outpatients with mental disorders were queried about their experiences with CJ leverages, as well as their clinical and treatment histories. Persons who had experienced at least one form of CJ leverage were more likely to be younger and male and to have more hospitalizations than persons who had never experienced a CJ leverage. However, leverage experience was not associated with treatment compliance and satisfaction, or perceptions of coercion and mandate efficacy, particularly when demographic characteristics were considered.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Use of leverage to improve adherence to psychiatric treatment in the community.

OBJECTIVES: A variety of tools are being used as leverage to improve adherence to psychiatric treatment in the community. This study is the first to obtain data on the frequency with which these tools are used in the public mental health system. Patients' lifetime experience of four specific forms of leverage-money (representative payee or money handler), housing, criminal justice, and outpatient commitment-was assessed. Logistic regression was used to examine associations between clinical and demographic characteristics and receipt of different types of leverage. METHODS: Ninety-minute interviews were conducted with approximately 200 adult outpatients at each of five sites in five states in different regions of the United States. RESULTS: The percentage of patients who experienced at least one form of leverage varied from 44 to 59 percent across sites. A fairly consistent picture emerged in which leverage was used significantly more frequently for younger patients and those with more severe, disabling, and longer lasting psychopathology; a pattern of multiple hospital readmissions; and intensive outpatient service use. Use of money as leverage ranged from 7 to 19 percent of patients; outpatient commitment, 12 to 20 percent; criminal sanction, 15 to 30 percent; and housing, 23 to 40 percent. CONCLUSIONS: Debates on current policy emphasize only one form of leverage, outpatient commitment, which is much too narrow a focus. Attempts to leverage treatment adherence are ubiquitous in serving traditional public-sector patients. Research on the outcomes associated with the use of leverage is critical to understanding the effectiveness of the psychiatric treatment system.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

An actuarial model of violence risk assessment for persons with mental disorders.

OBJECTIVES: An actuarial model was developed in the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study to predict violence in the community among patients who have recently been discharged from psychiatric facilities. This model, called the multiple iterative classification tree (ICT) model, showed considerable accuracy in predicting violence in the construction sample. The purpose of the study reported here was to determine the validity of the multiple ICT model in distinguishing between patients with high and low risk of violence in the community when applied to a new sample of individuals. METHODS: Software incorporating the multiple ICT model was administered with independent samples of acutely hospitalized civil patients. Patients who were classified as having a high or a low risk of violence were followed in the community for 20 weeks after discharge. Violence included any battery with physical injury, use of a weapon, threats made with a weapon in hand, and sexual assault. RESULTS: Expected rates of violence in the low- and high-risk groups were 1 percent and 64 percent, respectively. Observed rates of violence in the low- and high-risk groups were 9 percent and 35 percent, respectively, when a strict definition of violence was used, and 9 percent and 49 percent, respectively, when a slightly more inclusive definition of violence was used. These findings may reflect the "shrinkage" expected in moving from construction to validation samples. CONCLUSIONS: The multiple ICT model may be helpful to clinicians who are faced with making decisions about discharge planning for acutely hospitalized civil patients.

Actuarial Analysis↗

PubMed2005

Validation of the brief jail mental health screen.

OBJECTIVE: Jails have a substantial legal obligation to provide health and mental health care for inmates; yet screening procedures across American jails are highly variable. Currently, no valid, practical, standardized tool is available. The study reported here sought to validate a revision of the Referral Decision Scale (RDS)--the Brief Jail Mental Health Screen (BJMHS)--which provides an even briefer and more practical tool for use in jails. METHODS: Valid BJMHS data were collected in four jails (two in Maryland and two in New York) from 10,330 detainees. A total of 357 detainees were also administered the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID) for standardized clinical cross-validation: 125 detainees (74 men and 51 women) who were classified as referrals for further mental health assessment on the basis of BJMHS and 232 detainees (137 men and 95 women) who were not classified as referrals. RESULTS: The BJMHS takes an average of 2.5 minutes to administer. It correctly classified 73.5 percent of males but only 61.6 percent of females on the basis of SCID diagnoses. Overall, the BJMHS identified 11.3 percent of screened detainees for further mental health assessment. CONCLUSIONS: The BJMHS is a practical, efficient tool that jail correction officers can give male detainees on intake screening. However, the screen has an unacceptably high false-negative rate for female detainees.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Mental disorder, violence, and gender.

Recent studies have reported comparable rates of violence among men and women with mental disorder, raising important issues for clinical risk assessment. This study examines the relationship between gender and violence using data from the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study. Patients in acute psychiatric wards were interviewed 5 times over the year following their discharge to the community. Results showed some differences between men and women in the violence committed immediately following discharge, with rates for men being higher. But the prevalence of violence over the 1 year was similar for female and male discharged patients. However, there were substantial gender differences in the situational context of the violence committed. Men were more likely to have been drinking or using street drugs, and less likely to have been adhering to prescribed psychotropic medication, prior to committing violence. The violence committed by men was more likely to result in serious injury than the violence committed by women, and men were more likely than women to be arrested after committing a violent act. Women were more likely to target family members and to be violent in the home.

Female↗

PubMed2003

Perceived coercion at hospital admission and adherence to mental health treatment after discharge.

The authors investigated whether mental health inpatients' perceptions of coercion were associated with later treatment adherence. Psychiatric inpatients receiving acute care at three sites were interviewed during their hospitalization and up to five times after discharge. Patients' perceptions of coercion were measured at admission. Adherence to medication and clinical treatment was measured every ten weeks for one year after discharge. Among the 825 patients who had a perceived coercion score and ten-week follow-up data and who reported that outpatient treatment was prescribed, perceived coercion scores were not associated with treatment adherence. The authors concluded that perceived coercion neither increases nor decreases psychiatric inpatients' medication adherence or use of treatment services after discharge.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

Perceived coercion and treatment adherence in an outpatient commitment program.

The authors investigated whether mental health inpatients' perceptions of coercion were associated with postdischarge treatment adherence. Patients eligible for New York's outpatient commitment program were interviewed and their perceptions of coercion measured during hospitalization and at one, five, and 11 months after discharge. Medication and clinical treatment adherence were measured at the three postdischarge interviews. Among the 117 participants who completed at least one follow-up interview, higher perceived coercion scores were correlated with greater self-reported adherence to clinical treatment at the one-month follow-up but not with participants' greater self-reported adherence at subsequent follow-ups or with providers' ratings of participants' adherence. Perceived coercion scores were positively correlated with participants' self-reported adherence to injected medications.

Aftercare↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Persistence and stability of delusions over time.

Traditional descriptions of delusions have emphasized the conviction with which they are held and their resistance to change. This study utilizes data from a large cohort of delusional subjects to assess the persistence and stability of delusional beliefs, and the predictors of change. Data were collected from 1,136 acutely hospitalized psychiatric patients, reinterviewed at 10-week intervals for 1 year. Persistence of delusional beliefs was determined for those delusional subjects with at least one follow-up visit (n = 405), and stability for the subset with delusions at two or more points in time (n = 262). Marked plasticity in delusional beliefs was observed, with one third of delusional subjects at any interview no longer delusional 10 weeks later. Persistence of delusions was associated with schizophrenia, global psychopathology, and having acted on a delusion, among other variables. Most subjects showed variation in the content of their primary delusion over time. Delusions appear to be more fluid over relatively short periods of time than has been suggested by many classic descriptions and contemporary formulations.

Acute Disease↗