UC Berkeley

The authors developed Three Ratings of Involuntary Admissibility (TRIAD) to reflect the way clinicians in psychiatric emergency rooms apply legal criteria for the involuntary commitment of patients. Using TRIAD to rate patients on danger to self, danger to others, and grave disability, psychiatric social workers observing patients and clinicians correctly predicted 82 percent of 89 dispositions in two metropolitan county hospitals. These results indicate that clinicians agree on the meaning of the legal criteria and are able to apply them consistently.