It has provided and rolled out a set of psychiatric management guidelines for doctors treating certain mental disorders within Texas' publicly-funded mental health care system, along with manuals relating to each of them. The algorithms commence after diagnosis and cover pharmacological treatment (hence "Medication Algorithm"). TMAP was initiated in the fall of 1997 and the initial research covered around 500 patients.

In 1994 MAP was mentioned as an example of a successful project in a paper regarding implementing mental health screening programs throughout the United States, by the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. The President had previously been Governor of Texas, in the period when TMAP was implemented. Similar programs have been implemented in about a dozen States, according to a 2004 report in the British Medical Journal.

TMAP arose from a collaboration that began in 1995 between the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation (TDMHMR), pharmaceutical companies, and the University of Texas Southwestern. According to the British Medical Journal, "the project (TMAP) was funded by a Robert Wood Johnson grant (along with several drug companies)." The research was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Meadows Foundation, the Lightner-Sams Foundation, the Nanny Hogan Boyd Charitable Trust, TDMHMR, the Center for Mental Health Services, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Health Services Research and Development Research Career Scientist Award, the United States Pharmacopoeia Convention Inc. and Mental Health Connections.

The companies which produce and market the drugs(1) recommended as standard treatments were consulted and assisted in the production of the guidelines.

Similar algorithms and prescribing advice have been produced elsewhere, for instance at the Maudsley Hospital, London.

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