Decisions to Initiate Involuntary Commitment: The Role of Intensive Community Services and Other Factors

For individuals in crisis, involuntary psychiatric hospitalization can be lifesaving—but also life disrupting. In Virginia, decisions to initiate involuntary commitment are made by emergency evaluators employed by 40 community service boards. Data from more than 2,600 evaluations showed that a lack of intensive community-based alternatives to hospitalization, such as temporary housing and voluntary residential or short-term crisis stabilization, was a significant predictor of evaluators’ decisions to initiate commitment. The findings provide “a sound empirical basis” for investing in a continuum of crisis stabilization services, the authors note.