UC Berkeley

Background

Assignment to a community treatment order (CTO) has been associated with reduced mortality risk. In Victoria Australia civil-rights enhancements involving capacity to refuse involuntary treatment have contributed to a 15% reduction between 2010 and 2019 in CTO assignments among first hospitalized patients with Schizophrenia diagnoses. Has this change impacted patient mortality risk?

Study design

This study considered mortality-risk between 2010 and 2019 for 3 patient groups with schizophrenia diagnoses: All 4848 hospitalized patients who were assigned to a CTO for the first time in the period; 3988 matched and randomly selected patients, who were first hospitalized in the decade, without CTO assignment; and 1675 never hospitalized or CTO-assigned outpatients. Deaths of Schizophrenic patients in each group were evaluated against expected deaths given standardized mortality ratios for Victoria. Logistic regression was used to evaluate mortality risk for each treatment group while taking account of race, demographics, differential access to initial diagnoses of life-threatening physical illness, mental health service resources, and indicators of social disadvantage.

Study results

A total of 78% of the 777 deaths of schizophrenia patients in all 3 groups were premature. The 2 hospitalized groups did not differ in mortality risk. Among Victoria's 2010-2019 outpatients (inclusive of treatment refusers with a recorded service contact), 16.2% had a Schizophrenia diagnosis-up from 0.2% in 2000-2009, the prior decade. Outpatients with Schizophrenia were at 48% greater risk of death than individuals in the hospitalized groups, taking all the afore mentioned risk factors into account.

Conclusions

Reductions in CTO utilization associated with potential treatment refusals of involuntary community-treatment supervision, seem to have increased mortality risk for this vulnerable population. The line between civil-rights protection and abandonment has been blurred.