For many of the people who actually use mental health services, parity is controversial when the increased insurance coverage is used to pay for forced treatment or strictly medical approaches to the healing of emotional distress. Parity and easier commitment greatly benefit the drug companies bottom line by bringing more people into medical treatment. PACT is an intensive community treatment model of service delivery originally developed in Madison Wisconsin. It can be an effective way to provide services to people who traditionally have not been well served by the mental health system. In the past, a fundamental part of PACT has been the development of a trusting relationship between members of the PACT team and the person they are supposed to be helping.
PACT is an expensive service.
It can be intrusive and coercive if not done well. The new PACT is not being done well. States would have to increase the amount of money in their systems to implement PACT as it was originally designed to operate. That isn t happening. In states like New York, members of treatment teams are mandated to report non-compliance so that the process of sending the person back to the hospital can be initiated.