[ACT and the trends of psychiatric community care]

Bleuler has said that we have to provide community care for people with schizophrenia. In Japan, the process of modernization already ended by the miraculously swift growth of the economy in the postwar era. So it will be difficult to maintain facilities such as psychiatric hospital because the maintenance costs are too high. The core of mental health system should be community care in the future. The deinstitutionalization is essential to realize community care. Assertive community treatment (ACT) is the effective support system for people with severe mental illness (SMI). A characteristic of ACT is multidisciplinary team consisting of specialists in welfare and in medical service (ex. nurse, psychiatric social worker, occupational therapist, doctor, etc.) providing care for people with SMI. The following are detailed explanations of ACT.