When Community Treatment Orders (CTOs) were created under the Mental Health Act of 2007, it was hoped that psychiatric patients discharged from hospital subject to such an order would be more likely to continue taking their prescribed medication, therefore reducing their risk of future relapse, and of being readmitted to hospital. This candid debate filmed at the Battle of Ideas addresses the growing anxiety that not only have CTOs failed to curb hospital readmissions, they are being used as an easy substitute for hospital treatment and have been dubbed ‘the psychiatric ASBO’.
