“The state of mental health in Oklahoma, back when I began as a prosecutor, almost seemed better than where we are currently,” said Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler, the meeting’s organizer and a critic of the state’s mental health system. “That’s not the fault of any one individual or agency. If you look at the statistics across the country, everybody is experiencing these exact same problems.”

Kunzweiler noted that the state has spent a good deal of money, much of it from COVID relief funds, to build and improve facilities.

“There is momentum at the state level, and we want to continue down that path,” he said.

The breakfast served as a sort of launching pad for initiatives in next spring’s legislative session. About a dozen lawmakers heard from six speakers: Kunzweiler, Tulsa County Sheriff Vic Regalado, Dr. Jason Beaman of the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences, Dr. Kathy LaFortune of the Tulsa County Public Defender’s Office, mental health consultant Crystal Hernandez, northeastern Oklahoma District Attorney Jack Thorp, and Community Health Connection Director of Behavioral Health Denise Dart.

Beaman wears many smocks at OSU-CHS but is probably best known as an authority on addiction and psychosis. He said the state needs more professionals and a plan to train and retain those professionals.

In many years, he said, the majority of psychiatrists who graduate from OSU-CHS leave Oklahoma.

“We need more of an evidence-based, high-quality workforce in Oklahoma to get evidence-based outcomes,” Beaman said.

Later, in response to a question, Beaman lent his support to regulating the THC content of medical marijuana. THC is cannabis’ primary active ingredient.

“There is a strong correlation between the percentage of THC and several mental illnesses, including schizophrenia,” he said. “I’m a severe mental illness psychiatrist. I’ve seen 10,000 individuals with schizophrenia. Two have never smoked marijuana.

“I’m not saying marijuana causes schizophrenia,” Beaman continued. “I’m telling you we’ve got a schizophrenia problem in Oklahoma, and we have a pharmacy in every strip mall, every gas station, in every parking lot.”

Beaman said all marijuana research of which he is aware used cannabis of no more than 9% THC, while most being sold in Oklahoma is at least twice that potency.

LaFortune touched on the staffing issue and said Oklahoma lacks sufficient capacity for the most seriously mentally ill residents. She noted that more than 30 Tulsa County jail inmates are awaiting space in the state’s lone facility for the most dangerously mentally ill, the Oklahoma Forensic Center in Vinita.

Some of those, she said, have been in custody for more than a year.

Regalado said he’s suggested leasing one or both of the county jail’s unused pods to the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, saying that could provide up to 100 additional beds. He also said money that now goes to county sheriffs for mental health and addiction programs might be more effectively spent on professional treatment outside the jails.

Hernandez, a former administrator of the Oklahoma Forensic Center, said the shortage of suitable facilities causes many people experiencing serious mental health episodes to simply be kept in hospital emergency rooms until they’re exhausted, and then they’re sent home.

Nevertheless, Kunzweiler advocated making involuntary civil commitments easier, with greater judicial oversight of those placed in hospitals.

The most personal account came from Dart, who said her adult son’s treatment-resistant schizophrenia has grown steadily worse since they moved to Tulsa from Arizona seven years ago.

“I would never have imagined that after living here nearly seven years we would still be unable to obtain even remotely equivalent treatment,” Dart said. “The very treatment that helped him stabilize after traumatic hospitalizations and involvement with law enforcement has been repeatedly denied him in Tulsa.”

Specifically, Dart said her son had benefited in Arizona from what’s known as an assertive community treatment team, consisting of mental health professionals who come to the patient’s home if necessary. She said in Tulsa patients are not eligible for such teams until they’ve had an encounter with law enforcement or multiple hospitalizations.

“Our goal as a community should be to keep our vulnerable and suffering out of these traumatic settings rather than make them a requirement for treatment,” Dart said.

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