More satisfaction with prior treatment seems to reduce the risk of civil detention remarkably. Low levels of satisfaction seem to be mainly dependent on a history of previous involuntary admission. These findings seem to open up a new perspective for diminishing the risk of (new) civil detention by trying to enhance satisfaction with treatment, especially for patients under detention.

Of the social support variables, living alone proved to be the only predictor of emergency compulsory admission and readmission, and patients who lived alone had a smaller social network. A high level of negative social interactions increased the risk of compulsory admission among patients who lived alone.

With the presented prediction model it will be possible to identify patients at a high risk of civil detention: patients with a history of previous involuntary admissions who live alone and are not satisfied with the mental health care they got before. This suggests the possibility that timely preventive measures can be taken comprising the adjustment or intensification of the treatment plan for this specific group of patients.

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Background Accurate prediction models for whether patients on the verge of a psychiatric criseis need hospitalization are lacking and machine learning methods may help improve the accuracy of psychiatric hospitalization prediction models. In this paper we evaluate the accuracy of ten machine learning algorithms, including the generalized linear model (GLM/logistic regression) to predict psychiatric hospitalization in the first 12 months after a psychiatric crisis care contact. We also evaluate an ensemble model to optimize the accuracy and we explore individual predictors of hospitalization. Methods Data from 2084 patients included in the longitudinal Amsterdam Study of Acute Psychiatry with at least one reported psychiatric crisis care contact were included. Target variable for the prediction models was whether the patient was hospitalized in the 12 months following inclusion. The predictive power of 39 variables related to patients’ socio-demographics, clinical characteristics and previous mental health care contacts was evaluated. The accuracy and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of the machine learning algorithms were compared and we also estimated the relative importance of each predictor variable. The best and least performing algorithms were compared with GLM/logistic regression using net reclassification improvement analysis and the five best performing algorithms were combined in an ensemble model using stacking. Results All models performed above chance level. We found Gradient Boosting to be the best performing algorithm (AUC = 0.774) and K-Nearest Neighbors to be the least performing (AUC = 0.702). The performance of GLM/logistic regression (AUC = 0.76) was slightly above average among the tested algorithms. In a Net Reclassification Improvement analysis Gradient Boosting outperformed GLM/logistic regression by 2.9% and K-Nearest Neighbors by 11.3%. GLM/logistic regression outperformed K-Nearest Neighbors by 8.7%. Nine of the top-10 most important predictor variables were related to previous mental health care use. Conclusions Gradient Boosting led to the highest predictive accuracy and AUC while GLM/logistic regression performed average among the tested algorithms. Although statistically significant, the magnitude of the differences between the machine learning algorithms was in most cases modest. The results show that a predictive accuracy similar to the best performing model can be achieved when combining multiple algorithms in an ensemble model.