The civil commitment statutes of Oregon were changed in 1973 and 1975 to
include nonphysician court examiners and public prosecutors in the
commitment hearing. To evaluate the effect of these changes the authors
compared the commitment decisions actually made by panels composed of two
physicians with those made by panels with one physician and one
nonphysician mental health professional. They also compared the commitment
decisions made by six groups of medical and nonmedical people involved with
the commitment process regarding five case vignettes. They found that
decisions made by the nonmedical mental health professionals were not
significantly different from those made by the psychiatric examiners.Abstract Teaser