Oklahoma has spent among the least in the nation on its mental health system, a trend that dates back decades. Currently, Oklahoma is among 10 states that spend the least per capita on mental health.
Jaclyn Cosgrove, health reporter at The Oklahoman, joins us to talk about her yearlong project on mental illness and addiction in Oklahoma.
“Epidemic Ignored” is a yearlong investigation into Oklahoma's mental health system. KOSU will be visiting with Jaclyn throughout the coming months as she explores mental illness and addiction in Oklahoma. Find more of her stories at newsok.com.
Below, watch a video from the 1950s, documenting progress made on the treatment of Oklahoma's mentally ill:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg5sLuSYpdE
TRANSCRIPT:
MICHAEL CROSS, HOST: Tell us what you learned in researching the history of the state’s mental health system.
JACLYN COSGROVE: Oklahoma has never really invested in its mental health system. And this is an issue that dates back to even before statehood. In the late 1800s, Oklahoma was sending residents out of state for care, for example, in Illinois. But then, that became too expensive. It was one of the most expensive things that the territorial government was paying for. So they brought them home, and the state contracted with the Oklahoma Sanitorium Company. That was essentially the beginning of the mental health system in 1895.
CROSS: And then what happened from there?
COSGROVE: For the next few decades, the state would open psychiatric hospitals, but through the 1930s and 1940s, those hospital buildings would crumble, and become incredibly overcrowded. In 1946, The Oklahoman had a journalist named Mike Gorman who did a lengthy investigation of what those hospitals were like. He wrote that most people didn’t receive treatment and instead were just left in the hospitals for years of their lives without ever getting better. In part of his story, he wrote: “Most of them do not receive even adequate custodial care; more serious than anything, a large number of them could be living happy constructive lives as cured persons. Instead they are wasting long years in institutions for lack of adequate care.”
CROSS: Is there anything that helped turn the system around after that 1946 investigation?
COSGROVE: Yes, the state hired Dr. Hayden Donahue, a psychiatrist originally from Oklahoma. Donahue had served in World War II as a surgeon and psychiatrist, and he trained under some of the most accomplished psychiatrists of that time. And through the 1950s onto the 1980s, Dr. Donahue would become one of the most respected psychiatrists in America. He was our first mental health department director, starting in 1953. And just in his first year on his job, he made significant changes, namely hiring more staff so that patients could actually receive some level of treatment. In a public video he recorded, he talked about the impact of more staff.
DR. HAYDEN DONAHUE: “Back a few years ago, the average spent eight years in a state mental hospital when they came in. Now we’re getting out, in three of our hospitals, 65 percent of our patients are going home in six months, and about 75 percent are going home in eight to nine months.”
CROSS: How successful was Dr. Donahue in improving mental health in Oklahoma?
COSGROVE: Donahue brought the first community mental health center in America to Oklahoma. After President Kennedy signed the community mental health act in 1963, Oklahoma opened its first center. And this was thought to be a major turning point for the state and nation’s mental health system.
CROSS: This was when states were closing their large hospitals and moving toward community health, right?
COSGROVE: Yes, and Oklahoma took a while to close its hospitals. For example, Eastern State Hospital in Vinita didn’t close until the early 2000s. These hospitals were said to be expensive -- although Oklahoma was among the states spending the least on them -- and so the money spent on the hospitals was supposed to go to community mental health. That didn’t happen, and now Oklahoma spends $56 per capita on mental health, less than half the national average.
CROSS: So what’s the current status of the state mental health department?
COSGROVE: Oklahoma is thought to have one of the highest rates of mental illness in the nation. When I spoke to Terri White, the state mental health commissioner, she talked about how an estimated 700,000 to 950,000 Oklahoman adults and children need treatment, but her agency can only treatment 195,000 in some capacity.
TERRI WHITE: So what that means is, there’s a majority of Oklahomans in need of treatment who aren’t able to get services. When that happens, that’s when we have to worry about negative consequences because diseases get worse, not better, when you deny people care.”
CROSS: Jaclyn Cosgrove is a health reporter at The Oklahoman, completing a RosalynnCarter mental health journalism fellowship this year.
