Treatment Advocacy Center

So from that point on, it gets used by advocates uninterested in actually understanding citations.

It gets used by advocates promoting coercive policies again and again and again, including the Treatment Advocacy Center.

Although the Treatment Advocacy Center, I think most recently quoted 50% to 98%, which is just like...

It's another angle of this where there's a study that I believe misquotes Amador's 57 as being 50 because Amador since that time keeps saying 50.

But as far as I can tell, when Javier Amador says 50% of people with schizophrenia experience anosognosia, he's just guessing.

He's just thrown it out there saying like, that's my vibe.

And people are quoting him.

So I believe the most recent quote from this treatment advocacy center is referring to a study that says 50% to 98%, which at that point seems to be two misquotes.

We're on the phone.

We stay on the phone with them until someone from, um, the 988 Crisis, uh, Center picks up, and we have a little conversation about what's happening, what this person needs, and how to best support them.

Uh, and then the crisis worker takes it from there.

Oh, beautiful.

I try, but, um, now I'll have a place where people can also call.

And I will say, um, you know, I've been active, uh, I've been on the board of Schizophrenia and Psychosis Action Alliance, and when we were on that board, we were told by our, uh, staff that they were getting calls from, uh, referrals from NAMI, people that you now are talking to, but that NAMI was referring to another organization, the hard cases.

The Treatment Advocacy Center, I know you know Jerry Clark and others who work there, um, also, you know, is taking up the slack for NAMI with people calling there trying to get help for various things.

And, um, I served on the NAMI National Board, uh, years ago, and then we did, it was kind of focused on caregivers and people with schizophrenia.

The country doesn't face a shortage of psychiatric beds for these psychotic people.

The Treatment Advocacy Center reported 36,150 state psychiatric hospital beds in 2023, a historic low of 10.8 beds per 100,000 people.

Now, whatever the numbers are, I don't know.

But here's what I do know.

The thing is, though, is that I think one of the problems that exists in this dialogue is that.

For instance, if you listen to someone from the Treatment Advocacy Center get up and start talking about this stuff or somebody, especially somebody from a very pro-AOT camp, they're going to draw on people's existing biases that, oh, it's just an outpatient treatment.

That sounds good.

People who are advocating for AOT can just point to a number and say, look, p-value, statistical significance in this study over here.

So when you have something like AOT, where the requirement is or one of the primary requirements, is at least two hospitalizations within the previous three years, and many of the people are coming out of a hospitalization, it's almost guaranteed to show a benefit.

And I wanted to say all of that to continue the momentum or really highlight what you're both saying, which is that this quantitative data, these results have value but need to be put into context and considered carefully.

Why is that important? It's important because the primary organization pushing for AOT laws throughout the United States is the Treatment Advocacy Center or TAC.

TAC has for many, many years, been citing two sources to convince legislators in other states to pass AOT.