As a longtime medical educator, I teach my students to not simply treat symptoms but to look for the root causes. Treating symptoms may offer temporary relief but often doesn’t address an underlying disease which might become increasingly worse without some form of direct intervention. When it comes to the Oklahoma Legislature in its upcoming session, the choice facing our elected officials will be to either seek only to provide temporary relief of symptoms or make the smarter decision for our future by addressing root causes.
Oklahoma is behind only West Virginia for the percentage of residents impacted by a serious mental illness. Yet our state government spends less than $54 per capita to provide mental health services to its citizens when the national average for states is more than $120 per person. The “symptoms” of inadequate funding for prevention, early intervention, and treatment of mental illness and substance abuse disorders are seen in the rapid growth of incarceration in state prisons and local jails, escalating demands on our foster care system, higher rates of uncompensated medical care in emergency rooms, a rising number of people experiencing homelessness, and far too many suicides.
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In 2014, the Tulsa World published a series regarding the challenges faced by our community and state associated with the long-standing inattention to meeting adequately the needs of those who suffer from this disease of the brain. We need not look further than our own community to see the cost of untreated mental illness by recognizing the millions of tax dollars to be spent on expanding jail facilities to house offenders who are mentally ill. As a professor at OSU’s medical school, I hear the frustrations of our emergency room physicians who provide care to those impacted by mental illness and homelessness who are without enough other options for more appropriate medical care.
A chronically underfunded state mental health system is an enormous and growing financial burden on each of us every year when our policymakers fail to look beyond the symptoms alone caused by inadequate attention to mental illness and substance abuse in Oklahoma. In its newest budget proposal, state mental health officials seek a substantial funding increase for programs such as the Smart on Crime Initiative, suicide prevention, more and better treatment for military veterans, and additional beds for residential substance treatment and mental health crisis. Making this investment will certainly pay dividends to Oklahoma taxpayers in the future.
The Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services’ fiscal 2016 budget request, however, is premised on the assumption that the state must meet this financial challenge alone when, in fact, other dollars are available from federal sources to help provide relief. Oklahoma is one of only about 20 states that have, to date, refused federal funding to expand Medicaid coverage. Accepting back our federal tax dollars would provide coverage for 126,000 currently uninsured Oklahomans and close the gap on providing mental health services to our family members and neighbors who are in need.
Mental Health Association Oklahoma endorses our state mental health agency’s proposal to more comprehensively and directly address the mental health issues plaguing Oklahoma, and we encourage state leadership to accept federal tax dollars to expand Medicaid coverage.
Partisan politics have proved to be too strong of a force in decision-making when it comes to taking care of people’s health. It’s time for our elected officials to step up and represent the Oklahomans who elected them even during these brutal financial times and make the best choices for all of our needs.
Dr. Richard Wansley is a professor at Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences and serves as chairman for the Public Policy Committee of Mental Health Association Oklahoma.
