Naturalistic outcomes of patients discharged from a community treatment order: QA project

To study outcomes for patients after they are discharged from Community treatment orders (CTO) including rate of relapse, median time to relapse and to identify the risk factors associated with relapse.

The study population included patients discharged from CTO from July 2017 to December 2021, managed by a major metropolitan* case management team (CMT). The data were collected from electronic medical records (EMR). Descriptive analysis was conducted to study the sample characteristics. Logistic regression using univariate and multivariate analysis was performed to examine the associations between factors related to relapse.

A total of 128 patients were studied. The relapse rate was 27.4% with median time to relapse of 72 days. Poor insight, poor treatment compliance, duration of CTO and number of CMT contacts were significantly associated with relapse while substance use, psychiatric comorbidities and psychosocial factors were not.

The findings suggest that people who relapsed had poor insight and poor medication adherence, had CTO for a longer period and had frequent contact from CMT even after discharge from CTO.