Legal and clinical dimensions to experimental research in social psychiatry: the case of the OCTET trial

Background/Objectives: The current emphasis on evidence based policy and practice suggests that interventions and treatment should be tested via rigorous experimental research. As regards legal regimes for involuntary community treatment of people with severe and enduring mental illness, only two RCTs have ever been conducted. They were both conducted in the USA and reported inconclusive results. The OCTET RCT of community treatment orders (CTO), which is currently underway in England, will become the third, and largest, such study to be conducted. In this paper we discuss issues which arose during design and im…