Psychiatric services : a journal of the American Psychiatric Association
-
A significant proportion of patients of assertive community treatment (ACT) teams will adamantly refuse medication. Whether the team should continue to encourage medication or put a hold on advocating for medication is a clinical and ethical dilemma. On the basis of their clinical experiences, the authors propose best-practices criteria that ACT teams can consider in deciding whether medications may be temporarily discontinued when a patient refuses them. The authors suggest that in some circumstances stopping medications in such a case may help in the development or repair of a therapeutic alliance over the long term.