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Treatment Advocacy Center


The Treatment Advocacy Center is a national U.S. nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating legal and other barriers to the timely and effective treatment of severe mental illness. The organization promotes laws, policies and practices for the delivery of psychiatric care and supports the development of innovative treatments for and research into the causes of severe and persistent psychiatric illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Among the organization’s principal activities are promoting the passage and implementation of assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) laws and progressive civil commitment laws and standards in individual states.

Research psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, M.D., founded the Treatment Advocacy Center in 1998 as a function of the National Association on Mental Illness (NAMI). For nearly 10 years in the decade after the widespread elimination of psychiatric hospital beds in the U.S., Dr. Torrey had been a psychiatrist at St. Elizabeths Hospital for the treatment of serious and persistent mental illness in Washington, D.C. There, he frequently treated patients who were unaware they were sick despite their profound and disabling symptoms of mental illness. He also recognized that individuals who would have been hospitalized prior to the closing of state psychiatric hospitals (a trend known as “deinstitutionalization”) were increasingly being migrated into jails and prisons because of behaviors that resulted from their non-treatment. With the generous support of entrepreneur Theodore Stanley and his wife Vada, the Treatment Advocacy Center separated from NAMI shorting after its founding to focus entirely on removing legal barriers to treatment for those with the most severe mental illnesses. Operating entirely without funding from companies or entities involved in the sale, marketing or distribution of pharmaceutical products, the Treatment Advocacy Center has evolved into the nation’s leading proponent for legal reform of civil commitment laws and standards and a source of authoritative research on issues arising from untreated severe mental illness. The organization operates independently with the generous support of the Stanley Medical Research Institute, the largest nongovernment source of funding for research into bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in the United States, and many individual donors and foundations. Dr. Torrey continues to serve as a member of the Treatment Advocacy Center’s board and is executive director of the Stanley Medical Research Institute.

The Treatment Advocacy Center engages in a wide range of activities and projects aimed at increasing treatment for people with severe mental illness. Areas of focus have or continue to include:


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