Mental Health Funding
Preserve funding for cost-effective, community-based mental health care for adults and children, including prevention, early intervention, and crisis mental health services for patients in need of immediate psychiatric intervention.
Saving Minds, Saving Money: Mental Health Funding (PDF)
The proposed House and Senate budgets for 82nd Legislature reverse four years of mental health care investment. The proposed budgets call for significant cuts to mental health care throughout the budget and across several state agencies. (Feb. 17, 2011)
AG Backs Mental Illness Coverage
The Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) says it expects health plans to comply with an attorney general's opinion that "group health plans that provide more than 60 outpatient visits for physical illnesses must ... provide the same number of visits for serious mental illness. (Feb. 2, 2009)
Primary Care Physicians Get Help With Children's Mental Health
Are you a primary care physician seeing children with serious mental or emotional disturbances? Do you feel you're in over your head? If so, TMA is here to help you with the revised and expanded 2008 version of Integrating Child and Adolescent Mental Health into Primary Care: A Resource Guide for Physicians. (Oct. 6, 2008)
The 80th Texas Legislature and Mental Health
Texas Health and Human Services (HHS) provides a recap of the 80th Texas Legislature, including actions related to mental health.
Mental Health and Substance Abuse
More than 4.3 million Texans, including 1.2 million children, live with some form of mental health disorder. Of these, 1.5 million cannot function at work, school, or in the community due to their illness. (January 2011)
Broken Minds, Broken System: DSHS Tries to Improve Texas Mental Health Care 
DSHS predicts a depressing future for mental health in the state. DSHS projects a 6-percent increase by 2009 in the number of adults who already get mental health care from a Local Mental Health Authority (LMHA) but who will need additional crisis services. The projection for children is shocking - a 74-percent increase. Even worse, DSHS expects 47 percent more adults and 195 percent more children will need crisis intervention by 2009. Projections are based on higher treatment demand resulting from expected population increases. (Texas Medicine, November 2007)
2007 Legislative Compendium: Mental Health
In recent years, a growing number of business leaders, law enforcement officials, and civic groups have joined with medicine and mental health advocates to push for better coverage of and funding for mental health services. (Oct. 23, 2007)
2005 Legislative Compendium: Mental Health
The mental health section of the compendium describes major issues that TMA tracked and the accomplishments - or close calls - of each of the following: Mental Health Services for Women with Postpartum Depression; Discharge of a Minor from a Mental Health Facility; Mental Health Court; Patient Refusal of Psychoactive Medication; Support for Mental Health Transformation State Incentive Grant; and Mental Health Near Miss.
Mental Health Blues: Physicians Seek to Focus Attention, Resources on Children's Mental Health
State dollars appropriated for children's mental health care fall far short of meeting the demand for care. Furthermore, physicians say managed care has starved down mental health benefits in private health plans to levels that have driven child psychiatrists out of the field and made obtaining adequate inpatient care for seriously ill children almost impossible. (Texas Medicine, April 2002)