We need to boost child outcomes. Investing in Oklahoma’s adult mental health system would help.

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Oklahoma’s dismal child welfare ranking opens the door to a variety of social problems including mental illness, high incarceration rates and failing schools.

The recently released 2024 Kids Count data showed that Oklahoma ranks 46th worst.

But a recently proposed mental health settlement offers reason for hope, even though the “landmark settlement agreement” faces resistance from Gov. Kevin Stitt and our state’s top mental health professional.

The agreement, which still needs legislative approval, could overhaul how we care for incarcerated individuals who aren’t competent to assist in their own defense.

If enacted, it would force the state to reduce the waiting period for competency restoration services, increase the number of beds used and bolster the number of people providing mental health treatment.

But, Gov. Stitt and commissioner of mental health, Allie Friesen, take the position that it would place “new, unreasonable burdens” on our mental health system.

I previously studied in depth the horrific conditions in our jails and prisons. For the past 25 years, I’ve also viewed first hand the impact of our lack of focus on students’ mental health.

Stitt’s administration has been open to controversial rules that I believe place new, unreasonable burdens on schools, but it seems unaware or unconcerned about students wrestling with childhood traumas known as Adverse Childhood Experiences , or ACEs for short. ACEs include childhood abuse, neglect, family dysfunction, racial discrimination, bullying, and other violent experiences that lead to long term harm.

When I starting teaching at Oklahoma City’s John Marshall High School in the 1990s, we served our share of students with learning disabilities, as well as severe emotional disturbances, conduct disorders, and mental illnesses.

The “white flight” phenomenon, which saw white people leaving urban areas, increased the concentrations of poor children who were dealing with ACEs-related traumas.

During the 1998-1999 school year alone, we buried five students and recent graduates.

But schools were improving.

For instance, on day one, students on Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs, would follow their special education teachers’ guidance, take their seats near the front of the room, open their learning materials, and work smart and steadily. And, we were better able to manage the number of students susceptible to significant breakdowns in class.

But when school choice exploded in the late 1990s, everything changed.

In the years that followed, I witnesses higher concentrations of poor students struggling with serious mental health issues, increased numbers of students with criminal convictions, and I had four students who witnessed the murder of a parent or a murder-suicide.

Our only options to help the students were to reach out to their families or work with school counselors to address the mental health or behavioral challenges.

It’s critical to address mental health problems in a timely manner. And, that’s an area where our state continues to struggle.

We need the increased investments that the new proposed settlement would provide.

In both my experience with incarcerated people and students, we need timely and coordinated interventions. It was so much more difficult and emotionally disturbing to tackle full-blown crises after they spun out of control because adults were slow to address interconnected issues in a timely manner. When I’d be covered with a student’s blood, or hold an unconscious student, I couldn’t understand why we adults hadn’t been more sensitive, earlier, to children’s crises.

We have so many devoted service providers.

But, we also need state officials who don’t think it’s acceptable to allow vulnerable incarcerated Oklahomans to go months without mental health treatment.

Because if we want to reverse decades of negative outcomes, years of high incarceration rates and better protect our children, we need to be willing to invest in providing adequate mental health treatment to adults.

A great place to start is by fixing our competency restoration services.

It’s not going to be cheap, but it is essential for preparing all of our children for healthy and rewarding lives.

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The post We need to boost child outcomes. Investing in Oklahoma’s adult mental health system would help. appeared first on Oklahoma Voice .