State mental health functions get as little money as the legislature can give them. Some state legislator will get stock ponds in his attic before any money will trickle down to the mental health workers. Oklahoma is the worst in the United States in providing care for the mentally ill. We send people out to die in the underpasses and beneath bridges in cardboard boxes rather than provide minimal care for them.
We have just closed down the only inpatient treatment unit for drug abusers, so they are no longer admitted into the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse. Something seem wrong with that sentence to you? Since we have not had any increase in personnel or hirings in ten years, while the number of people with mental health issues or substance abuse issues continue to increase, the number of staff decreases. That doesn't show much on the surface; we absorb the new patients somehow, but the quality of the services we provide decreases because there just isn't much to go around. The Center in which I work started with about 700 patients; now there are 2200, and there are NO additional staff.
It's not that the legislators don't recognize the problem. They probably do; it's that they don't care. The mentally ill are not frequent voters. They are more comfortably out of mind and sight and thought. They don't make a big noise. They don't have rallies of the mentally ill. I have this image of a lot of us showing up at the State Legislature with signs reading "Give the Mentally Ill some money or we'll come to your house to live!". How about "The Voices Said Give Us Money!" or "I vote for Mental Health ... and so do I!"
Better to joke than to cry.
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I dont even know were to start with this! I have had a mildly severe anxiety disorder my whole life, It has effected to a degree everything I have ever done. Yet more of my time is spent hiding it than trying to change the stigma with it. I would say that half of the mental health workers in the field are incompetent, usually due to there own issues or a lack of empathy(case overload?). The politicians are no different, At what point does someone technically have a mental health issue? I from a non educated standpoint believe that all humans have mental issues. It is one of those taboos that nobody wants to be connected with(pride). Issues of this size only change through education yet school administraters dont want to talk about it. When I read about mental helth conferences coming to town it usually speaks about how accomplished the people hosting the conference is, instead of what issues that person has dealt with, Not even the person teaching about mental health wants to be tainted with the mental health coodies! So what do we expect?
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