“Historically, federal dollars funded (psychiatric) hospitals, and then there was this movement to deinstitutionalize. Before that, it still wasn’t appropriately funded, but when we lost those dollars, they didn’t come from any other source, so no, it’s been decades of neglect. I don’t know of a time when mental health was appropriately funded in the state of Oklahoma.”

– Terri White, commissioner of the state Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, explaining her department’s funding needs in a Senate appropriations hearing on Tuesday. White says that without $10 million in additional funding, an estimated 14,722 will lose mental health and substance abuse treatment services (Source)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carly Putnam joined OK Policy in 2013. As Policy Director, she supervises policy research and strategy. She previously worked as an OK Policy intern, and she was OK Policy's health care policy analyst through July 2020. She graduated from the University of Tulsa in 2013. As a student, she was a participant in the National Education for Women (N.E.W.) Leadership Institute and interned with Planned Parenthood. Carly is a graduate of the Oklahoma Center for Nonprofits Nonprofit Management Certification; the Oklahoma Developmental Disabilities Council’s Partners in Policymaking; The Mine, a social entrepreneurship fellowship in Tulsa; and Leadership Tulsa Class 62. She currently serves on the boards of Restore Hope Ministries and The Arc of Oklahoma. In her free time, she enjoys reading, cooking, and doing battle with her hundred year-old house.

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