Community Treatment Orders

Abstract

Proposals for a Community treatment Order (CTO) are a logical extension of the move towards deinstitutionalisation and the treatment of patients in the community. They are directly relevant to the discussion about discharges of patients from mental hospitals because if implemented they would be expected to speed up the rate at which patients leave hospital. There are two main types of proposals on offer — one is confined to patients at the point at which they leave hospitals, another wants to go further, and extend CTOs to all patients, whether they have been in hospital or not. In both the aim is the same: to recreate hospital control systems in the community setting. This, of course, is part of the problem we have met before: how much further should treatment extend? Is the patient becoming enveloped in a control system from which it will be increasingly difficult to escape?