The PSA Thursday NewsWire: January 29th, 2026

On January 15, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) hosted a webinar to promote its program expanding “assisted outpatient treatment” (AOT)—a civil court procedure that’s essentially the psychiatric version of the jail-alternative programs seen in drug courts.

SAMHSA’s GAINS Center for Behavioral Health and Justice Transformation is currently taking applications for a “learning collaborative” (LC) that will provide selected candidates with subject-matter experts and technical assistance to enhance existing AOT programs in their communities, or establish new ones. Policy Research Associates, a self-described “positive social change” organization, has held the multi-million dollar GAINS Center contract since the early 1990s. 

“This LC will support teams in identifying and engaging community partners that have frequent interaction with individuals who may be eligible for AOT and are at risk of criminal justice involvement, homelessness or repeated crisis contact,” the GAINS Center stated in a December 2025 announcement. “Teams selected for this LC will work intensively to assess how AOT is currently functioning within their local and state statute and determine optimal ways to use AOT as an option for diversion, including approaches that support pre-arrest referral to community resources.”

AOT programs primarily target unhoused people with a history of drug use and/or psychiatric symptoms who have been deemed noncompliant by medical authorities. This form of involuntary commitment has been described as “psychiatric probation.” It is yet another carceral health service that reinforces structural oppression.

Organizations selected to participate in the taxpayer-funded LC will be mentored to improve their capacity to legally snatch vulnerable and marginalized people off the streets. They will skill up in coercing unhoused neighbors into civil court systems that siphon scarce resources from community-based services like permanent supportive housing.

“I thought [AOT] was involuntary at first, but then I quickly realized that it was super beneficial,” AOT program evaluator Dr. Cindy Gipson said during the opening presentation for the GAINS Center webinar.

Involuntary commitment is a cornerstone of President Donald Trump’s law-and-order approach to street homelessness, drug use and psychiatric disability. This was made clear in a July 2025 executive order and echoed in SAMHSA’s revised strategic priorities unveiled a few months later.

The practice emerged in the 1980s to correct what a number of medical authorities, cops and caregivers viewed as a pendulum that had swung just a little too far towards disabled people’s civil rights. They declared that deinstitutionalization—the movement to replace large hospital-based psychiatric treatment with smaller programs at community clinics—had failed, even though it has still never been fully implemented; JFK’s vision of community care was killed by Reaganomics. 

In the late 1990s, the Treatment Advocacy Center, aligned ideologically with right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and Manhattan Institute, began to exploit rare, high-profile murders committed by people with psychiatric diagnoses to sell their model involuntary outpatient commitment legislation to states. They rebranded the process as AOT, to make it sound more innocuous to policymakers.

Mainstream media outlets have repeated this propaganda, stoking fear and reinforcing false claims about people with “untreated serious mental illness” so that involuntary commitment has gained bipartisan support. 

Read the full article here

This article was originally published by Filter, an online magazine covering drug use, drug policy and human rights through a harm reduction lens. Follow Filter on Bluesky, X or Facebook, and sign up for its newsletter.

Editors: T. Peterson Wagner and Gaetano Lardieri

Publisher: IGI Global

Submission Deadline (Proposals): February 8, 2026

We are pleased to announce an open call for chapter proposals for the upcoming medical textbook, Psychedelics for Clinical Practice: Scientific, Social, Legal, and Economic Pathways.

As psychedelic-assisted therapies move toward regulatory approval and integration, there is a critical need for a rigorously evidence-based, practice-relevant reference. Our goal is to provide clinicians, health system leaders, policymakers, and industry stakeholders with the tools to operationalize psychedelic-related care responsibly and effectively.

Our editorial team is specifically seeking contributions that answer a central question: If a professional were establishing a new clinic, pharmacy service line, lab, or think tank, would this chapter provide the actionable, evidence-based guidance necessary to improve how that entity is designed, scaled, and evaluated?

We welcome chapters that synthesize high-level evidence and offer implementation-ready insights. Ideal submissions will address:

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