Governing AI in Mental Health: 50-State Legislative Review

State legislatures are rapidly shaping the regulatory landscape for MH-AI, but most laws treat mental health as incidental to broader artificial intelligence or health care regulation. Explicit mental health provisions remain rare, and clinician and patient perspectives are seldom incorporated into policymaking. The result is a fragmented and uneven environment that risks leaving patients unprotected and clinicians overburdened. Mental health professionals must proactively engage with legislators, professional organizations, and patient advocates to ensure that emerging frameworks address oversight, harm, autonomy, and privacy in ways that are clinically realistic, ethically sound, and supportive of flexible-but responsible-innovation.