Oklahoma Watch (http://oklahomawatch.org/category/publichealth/mental-health/)
Addiction-recovery homes across Oklahoma are turning away people who are trying to escape opioid addiction by taking medications considered highly effective for recovery. Use of Suboxone and similar medications is common, but many residents of the state’s Oxford Houses believe that complete abstinence is the only way to truly beat addiction.
Dr. Nicole Washington, the main psychiatrist at Family and Children’s Services in Tulsa, discusses the types of low-income clients she sees, the persistent problem of stigma, and why mental illness in poor neighborhoods should matter to all Oklahomans.
David Hammock was one of nine men who took their own lives in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary between 2012 and 2015. Convicted of arson at age 18 for burning down the old Sallisaw High School, he failed at chances to gain early release, and then, in the end, lost hope.
Law enforcement agencies are bearing much of the brunt of dealing with mentally ill people in crisis. But a unique new program is trying to take some of that burden away from police and prevent the mentally ill from unnecessarily ending up in jail.
When encountering the mentally ill, police officers and others can take various actions even if the person doesn’t consent.
When the mentally ill are in crisis, the first and only responders are usually police officers. That can heighten the risk of a violent confrontation, which is what occurred in the case of Eric Tompkins of Ardmore last year. Some communities are trying a different approach to allow mental-health experts to intercede, in collaboration with police.
Many jailers in Oklahoma have little training in how to deal effectively with the mentally ill. That can lead to bad decisions that endanger lives, mental-health and law-enforcement experts say.
Flanked by jailers, 40-year-old Corey Carter was led into the McCurtain County Jail’s shower room on Feb. 12 last year to change from his street clothes into a jail uniform.
Watch the McCurtain County Jail video in which Corey Carter is booked into the jail, refuses to don jail clothes and is eventually led into a room where a struggle leads to his death.
A spike in fatalities in Oklahoma jails this year and several confrontations between police and the mentally ill have raised questions about whether officers and jailers are sufficiently trained to deal with people with mental health problems.
Gary Clark, schizophrenic for years, stood on his front porch one day, holding a kitchen knife and experiencing a mental-health crisis. Officers would end up shooting him with pepper balls, shocking him with a Taser and firing three bullets into him.
