CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

EDITORIAL: The ongoing battle to fight mental illness stigma in Oklahoma

Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City) - 4/17/2015

April 17--FOR the past 21 years, Mike Brose has been trying, as he puts it, to help "provide a voice for people who often don't have a voice." He's speaking of (and for) the mentally ill in Oklahoma, who make up a significant portion of the population.

Brose is executive director of Mental Health Association Oklahoma, a Tulsa-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting mental health, preventing mental disorders and providing services -- and especially, advocating for those who suffer from this affliction.

A never-ending struggle for Brose's agency, and for all who work in this field, is getting policymakers and the general public to understand that mental illness is just that -- an illness. Whether it's depression or bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, these are diseases that generally can be controlled with proper medication and treatment.

Oklahoma, however, doesn't have the resources to keep up. For example, the state Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuses Services serves roughly 190,000 Oklahomans. But anywhere between 700,000 and 950,000 need mental health or substance abuse treatment. Consequently, the state agency must focus on those in crisis, while those whose conditions have not reached that stage go wanting.

Mental Health Association Oklahoma has been serving the Tulsa area for six decades, moving in October 2013 into Oklahoma City. MHAOK focuses on finding safe, affordable housing for those with mental illness, because without that, Brose says, other services aren't as effective.

The agency owns 21 apartment buildings spread across 16 neighborhoods in Tulsa. The 850 units are split roughly half and half between everyday Tulsans and those who have sought MHAOK's help because of homelessness, a criminal record or other issues. The arrangement has been a success through the years. The only blowback came about five years ago when MHAOK said it wanted to build a new housing complex for longtime residents of the Downtown YMCA who were to be displaced by the discontinuation of the Y's residential program. The agency overcame not-in-my-backyard concerns fueled by misinformation, and those apartments have proven successful.

In Oklahoma City, MHAOK operates a drop-in center at 1311 N Lottie that provides services and consultations for those living with mental illness or who are homeless. It manages a program, called TeenScreen, that works to identify suicide risk among high school students. Through its SunBridge Counseling, it provides screening and mental health counseling services to the uninsured and underinsured.

These are all badly needed. So too are efforts to treat mental illness in its early stages, and to give law enforcement and other first responders the training they need to best handle situations arising from mental illness. Brose noted work being done by the San Antonio Police Department along these lines, which has contributed to a decline in the use of deadly force.

Perhaps most important is to destroy the stigma associated with mental illness. If mental illness were an egg and you cracked it open, Brose said, out would flow prejudice and discrimination. Most people associate mental illness with headline-grabbing tragedies -- a mother drowning her children in a bathtub, or a man going on a shooting spree.

Thus people don't think twice about saying, as one TV reporter recently did to Brose, that a mentally ill man involved in a crime in Tulsa had "obviously gone off his rocker."

"Attitudes about mental illness are about 100 years behind the science," he said. "You would never use that language with other people with disabilities. We don't get it."

From the general public to policymakers, Oklahomans need to start getting it. Our many neighbors living with mental illness deserve our support, not our scorn.

___

(c)2015 The Oklahoman

Visit The Oklahoman at www.newsok.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC