Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT)- Brian Stettin Treatment Advocacy Center

Brian Stettin from the treatment advocacy center stopped by the CIT Knowledge Network to give a talk about the history of AOT. This is a unique law that directly impacts communities and public safety. The Treatment Advocacy Center was founded in Arlington, Virginia, by E. Fuller Torrey, MD, in 1998. Dr. Torrey had worked for 15 years at a Washington, DC, clinic for homeless people with severe mental illness and authored Out of the Shadows: Confronting America’s Mental Illness Crisis about the criminalization of mental illness. After consulting with other experts in the mental health and legal fields, he concluded that a concentrated effort was needed to reform state civil commitment laws so that decompensating individuals with severe mental illness received treatment before they became dangerous, homeless, incarcerated, victimized or suffered other common consequences of non-treatment.