It’s going to be a hard-sell. Every core agency is suffering, including common education, which is down $200 million, after years of fiscal evisceration. Most state workers have not had a raise in seven years.

Oklahoma has enormous mental health issues. It ranks No. 2 nationally in the number of adults suffering mental illness. Twenty-one percent of adults reported having a mental health issue in the past year and 12 percent experienced a substance abuse issue. Last year, the mental health department stretched its $155 million budget to provide help to 182,000 people.

“But this is only 182,000 of the 700,000 to 950,000 in need,” Terri White, agency commissioner, said. The extra $21 million wouldn’t make those numbers any better. It would just prevent the state from slipping further behind.

For Oklahoma, it is a Catch-22 — it cannot afford to fund adequately its mental health system but it really cannot afford not to, considering the consequences.

The state has a troubled history of simply reacting to problems — not intervening early to avoid more destructive and expensive problems.

In Oklahoma, we don’t like government doing too much; why should taxpayers pay to fix other people’s problems? The attitude reflects a disconnect between cause and effect. Taxpayers spend $20,000 a year to keep someone in prison when we could have spent a few thousand earlier on mental health or addiction treatment to help the same person avoid prison.

Do that and the result is a tax payer, not a tax consumer.

Will lawmakers find extra money for mental health treatment? We hope that they can. Treatment of mental illness should be considered a core service. To ignore its needs is to perpetuate a costly and seemingly endless cycle.