06-03-2025
Administrative Office of the Courts launches behavior health treatment program
The state Administrative Office of the Courts announced a new program involving court-ordered behavioral health treatment will begin this week for Santa Fe, Rio Arriba and Los Alamos counties.
The "assisted outpatient treatment" program will allow family members, behavioral health providers and others to request a court order that requires "qualifying individuals" to receive "community-based treatment" for mental health disorders, a news release from the agency states.
The criteria for assisted outpatient treatment are laid out in state law, including a diagnosis of a mental disorder and a lack of willingness to receive treatment. Other requirements include someone being jailed or hospitalized twice over a four-year period in relation to their mental illness, or acts of "serious violent behavior" toward themselves or others.
Outpatient treatment will be provided by the Santa Fe-based provider The Life Link.
The program aims to "help people who repeatedly have been hospitalized or jailed because they do not participate in treatment on a voluntary basis and as a result exhibit violent behavior or threaten harm to themselves or others," the release says.
An event is planned Friday morning for court officials and providers to explain more about how the program will work.
The provider will be expected to create a behavioral health treatment plan for each participant. The court will lead a team, including the courts' program manager and the behavioral health provider, to help people obtain treatment and possibly other services, such as housing and food assistance.
The statement also says the court will "hold the program participant and the behavioral health provider accountable to help ensure the participant adheres to the treatment plan."
Work on the program began in the state capital after the Legislature allocated $3 million for two pilot assisted outpatient treatment programs, one of them in the First Judicial District based in Santa Fe.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has called for reforms around involuntary commitments in New Mexico as well as to criminal competency laws in an effort to get more people into behavioral health treatment.
Some advocates have spoken against such plans to expand involuntary treatment through the criminal legal system. While lawmakers during last year's special session rejected the governor's agenda, they did appropriate funding for the assisted outpatient treatment program.
"Assisted Outpatient Treatment bridges a gap in available assistance for people struggling with mental illness," Chief Justice David K. Thomson said in the release. "People with untreated behavioral health disorders are likely to cycle through jails, courts, and hospital emergency rooms without the intervention they need to prevent their condition from worsening."
