Person-Centered Care in ACT and FACT: Addressing Client Preferences & Supporting Self-Determination

Service recipients in public mental health often experience stigma related to living with a mental illness, and may also experience coercive treatment approaches that undermine their sense of agency, such as being monitored and pressured to follow provider-defined treatment plans (Choy-Brown et al., 2020). Evidence suggests that coercive methods in mental health services tend to elicit client disengagement and hopelessness, while person-centered and recovery-oriented approaches support clients’ self-determination, self-efficacy, and well-being. This training identifies recovery-oriented principles, such as targeting a broad range of life goals among Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) and Forensic Assertive Community Treatment (FACT) clients, and person-centered care strategies, such as shared decision-making and emphasizing clients’ self-identified goals as the focus of treatment planning activities. A review of intervention approaches to support person-centered care, such as using harm reduction and trauma-informed frameworks, will be discussed.