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Involuntary outpatient treatment (IOT) is non-voluntary treatment applied in the community toensure therapeutic compliance by patients with severe mental illness and little insight, in whichnoncompliance involves a high risk of relapse, disruptive and violent behaviours, or frequenthospitalizations and emergency care. Although there is no specific legal regulation in Spain onIOT, some experiments have been launched in the last 15 years, in various Spanish cities, withthe aim of improving treatment adherence in individuals with severe mental illness and avoidingthe extremes of hospitalisation and civil incapacitation. This paper presents the results of twoobservational, retrospective studies of patients undergoing involuntary outpatient treatment in thecity of Valencia. We describe the psychiatric diagnosis, the persons seeking this treatment, andthe reasons for seeking it. We compare the number of emergencies and admissions and theaverage length of stay in the 6 and 12 months before and after the introduction of courtauthorization. Finally we analyze the events occurring during this period of time. Our impressionis that IOT is a measure that can be beneficial for some patients with severe mental illness and anadequate legal framework is required to explicitly govern its implementation.Involuntary Outpatient Treatment: The Views of the People InvolvedMiguel Hernández-Viadel, Hospital Clínico Universitario, Valencia, Spain (mhv4@comv.es)Involuntary outpatient treatment (IOT) aims to improve compliance with treatment, preventingthe deterioration of patients with severe mental illness and reducing the risk to themselves andother people. IOT is not free of controversy. Those who defend it regard it as a way of ensuringthat treatment is carried out, while opponents consider it a violation of the basic rights of theindividual, leading to an increase in coercion and stigmatisation of psychiatric patients. Thispaper presents a descriptive study, for which we have attempted to collect the opinions of peopleinvolved in IOT. The group studied was made up of all the patients in Involuntary OutpatientTreatment in the city of Valencia at the beginning of the project in October 2005, their relatives,and their outpatient unit psychiatrists. The results show that the great majority of psychiatristsand relatives think that IOT has been beneficial for patients’ treatment. There has even been anoverall clinical improvement since it was introduced. As for the opinion of the patients, over halfof them also feel that IOT has been a beneficial measure for their treatment.Social Influences and Challenges in Mandating Community Treatment OrdersNicole Snow, Faculty Centre for Nursing Studies & University of Alberta (nsnow@cns.nf.ca)Invoking Mental Health Acts and other legislation in mental health care is often controversial.While the law stipulates courses of action, occasionally these mandated processes arechallenging to follow, they are not amenable to the actualities in which they will be used, or they213