ACT for Life: Why Psychiatrists Pound the Pavement to Provide Care

To better understand the experience of psychiatrists working on assertive community treatment (ACT) teams and the factors that may draw them to this work, the authors created a survey and distributed it through e-mail groups of the American Association of Community Psychiatrists, the Columbia University Public Psychiatry Fellowship Alumni, and the New York State Center for Practice Innovations ACT Institute. A second survey, with questions primarily regarding safety concerns for ACT providers, was distributed to respondents of the first survey. Responses suggested that ACT leaders should foster teamwork, fieldwork, creativity, flexibility, safety, and leadership opportunities on ACT teams if they wish to engage psychiatrists in this work.