Competency Restoration Observatory
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Texas's mental-health waiting lists, from the public record

Texas had no binding competency-restoration admission deadline until a July 2026 federal ruling ordered one, now under appeal. This page tracks HHSC's own published waiting-list reports.

Built and maintained by Sudhanshu Rai, an independent researcher; not affiliated with any court, agency, or party. Descriptive measurement only — no causal claims.

Governing standard: HHSC Rider 47 (previously numbered Rider 45/50 in earlier budget cycles) and Judge Ezra's July 2026 ruling ordering a 21-day admission deadline — ordered but not yet enforced (Panel 1 of the comparison page); Texas is appealing. Prior to this ruling, Texas had no binding admission deadline at all, unlike Washington, Oregon, Colorado, or California's court-ordered standards.
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Texas24 rows · 12 columns · 2022-11–2025-08
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Non-max waitlist, 2025-08
1285people
The larger of Texas's two waitlist categories. Has stayed in a 1159–1526 range across every report on record — essentially flat, not a declining trend.
Source: mhs-waiting-lists-nov-2025.pdf — Table 7, page.14 ↗
Max-security waitlist, 2025-08
419people
The smaller, more acute category, tracked separately by HHSC.
Source: mhs-waiting-lists-nov-2025.pdf — Table 10, page.16 ↗
Max-security avg. wait, last comparable reading 2023-08
659days
Up from 519 days in 2022-11 (+27%). Not a current figure: HHSC changed its report format after 2023-08, and the newer tables' own footnote states people "do not directly admit from the maximum security list" — there is no wait-time figure for this statewide queue in any report since. An earlier version of this page paired the waitlist count above with a days figure from a different, much smaller population (patients already assigned to a specific hospital) — that was a real bug, now removed rather than corrected, since no genuine substitute exists. The waitlist count itself is still tracked and current.
Source: mhs-waiting-lists-nov-2023.pdf — Table 6, page.12 ↗
The headline number

Non-max waitlist — flat, not falling

The larger of Texas's two tracked waitlist categories, 2022-11–2025-08. Unlike the max-security wait-time figure in the KPI row above, this count has not meaningfully declined.

0500100015002022-11: 1481 — mhs-waiting-lists-may-2023.pdf — Table 5, page.122023-02: 1526 — mhs-waiting-lists-may-2023.pdf — Table 5, page.122023-05: 1345 — mhs-waiting-lists-nov-2023.pdf — Table 5, page.122023-08: 1200 — mhs-waiting-lists-nov-2023.pdf — Table 5, page.122023-11: 1178 — mhs-waiting-lists-nov-2024.pdf — Table 7, page.132024-02: 1249 — mhs-waiting-lists-nov-2024.pdf — Table 7, page.132024-05: 1159 — mhs-waiting-lists-nov-2024.pdf — Table 7, page.132024-08: 1208 — mhs-waiting-lists-nov-2024.pdf — Table 7, page.132024-11: 1247 — mhs-waiting-lists-nov-2025.pdf — Table 7, page.142025-02: 1195 — mhs-waiting-lists-nov-2025.pdf — Table 7, page.142025-05: 1205 — mhs-waiting-lists-nov-2025.pdf — Table 7, page.142025-08: 1285 — mhs-waiting-lists-nov-2025.pdf — Table 7, page.142022-112023-082024-052024-112025-08
Known caveat on this chart, unresolved: the design review behind this site flagged that a facility was reclassified between HHSC reporting cycles in a way that could affect this exact count — this rebuild has not identified the specific event (the original project files describing it were lost), so it's disclosed here rather than silently dropped or guessed at. If you know the facility and reporting cycle involved, that's a genuinely useful correction to send in.
Status

Data quality and reporting limitations

A known facility-reclassification caveat affecting the waitlist chart below is disclosed directly on that chart, not just here — see the flagged note under "Non-max waitlist" below for detail.
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Texas24 rows · 12 columns · 2022-11–2025-08
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Cite this dataset

Competency Restoration Observatory (2026). Texas mental-health waiting-list series [dataset]. competencyrestoration.org · data current through 2025-08 · page generated August 2026 · concept DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21436450 (always resolves to the latest dataset version — a version-pinned DOI matching this exact data window follows at the next Zenodo release).

Every figure regenerates from the public source reports by code — fully reproducible. The Zenodo deposit already includes real, MIT-licensed extraction code for the frozen Washington/Oregon study (an extraction pipeline plus its own verification gate) — but this dashboard's own full 5-state codebase (adapted from that study's code, plus Colorado, Texas, and California from scratch) is a separate, not-yet-public repository. A dedicated "Build & Replicate" walkthrough page and that public release are both planned but not yet published.

Data, code & contact

Open dataset + WA/OR code (Zenodo) Full dashboard code (public release planned) Email the maintainer Subscribe to corrections (RSS)

Researchers, clinicians, monitors, and reporters welcome — especially if you know of more recent source reports for this state. Every correction to an already-published number is logged on the Changelog page and in this RSS feed — nothing changes silently.