SAMHSA is celebrating its 20th anniversary as the successor agency to other federal agencies by asking people what they think are “are some of the most noteworthy accomplishments and changes” in "behavioral healthcare" in the past few years.

An unnamed “mental illness advocate” already has nominated “implementation of assisted outpatient treatment" (AOT) as one of the milestones. 

FIRST: We want to say "Thank you, mental illness advocate!" whoever and wherever you are.

SECOND: Though "behavioral" issues dominate SAMHSA’S online surveys, as long as the agency says its mission is reducing the impact of mental illness on America’s communities, we’re all for making sure those who suffer instead from disabling psychiatric diseases are not overlooked. So if you think the implementation AOT is a noteworthy development since 1991, the celebratory “stakeholder feedback forum” is taking votes from now until Monday, March 5, at 9 am, Eastern time. (Scroll down or use your search function to find the nomination.)

THIRD: In celebrating itself, SAMHSA says that the 20 years of its existence “have been so eventful that 1992 and 2012 bear very little resemblance to each other.” We’re not sure we’d go that far, but it’s certainly true that the population of psychiatric hospital beds has never been smaller, the percentage of mentally ill inmates in jails and prisons has never been higher, and the public commitment to people too ill to participate in the “self-determination and shared decision making” SAMHSA is celebrating has rarely seemed so precarious.

We’ll withhold the fireworks until we see progress on those fronts. In the meantime, the legal reforms we've seen since our founding in 1998 and the use of assisted outpatient treatment in more jurisdictions than ever before are indeed worth celebrating – and not just until March 5. After all, they are already saving lives every single day.  

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