The Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (ODMHSAS) is an agency of the Government of Oklahoma responsible for providing public health services relating to mental illness and substance abuse.
The Department is governed by the Board of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, composed of eleven members appointed by the Governor of Oklahoma with the approval of the Oklahoma Senate. The Governor of Oklahoma appoints the Commissioner of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services to serve as the chief executive officer of the Department. The current Commissioner is Carrie Slatton-Hodges, who was appointed Commissioner in January 2020 by Governor Kevin Stitt.
The Department was established in 1953 by the Mental Health Law of 1953. The law provides that all residents in the state are entitled to care and treatment for mental illness and addiction problems in accordance with appropriate standards of care.
History and function
The Department was established through the Mental Health Law of 1953, although publicly supported services to Oklahomans with mental illness date back to before statehood: the first facility in Oklahoma for the treatment of individuals with mental illness was established by the Cherokee Nation, called the Cherokee Home for the Insane, Deaf, Dumb, and Blind, it was built outside the city of Tahlequah in 1873. Non-Indians with mental illness were sent out of state for treatment to the Oak Lawn Retreat in Jacksonville, Illinois, until a private company, the Oklahoma Sanitarium Company, located in Norman, Oklahoma, began treating the mentally ill on June 15, 1895. The Department continues to operate a facility at this location today, now called Griffin Memorial Hospital.
Oklahoma's first state-operated facility for the treatment of mental illness opened in 1908, in Fort Supply, Oklahoma, and was called the Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane, later renamed Western State Psychiatric Hospital, and now called the Northwest Center for Behavioral Health. A year later, a second state-operated facility was opened in Vinita, Oklahoma, called the Eastern Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane, later renamed to the Oklahoma Forensic Center.
On October 31, 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed into law the Community Mental Health Act of 1963, which sparked a major transformation of the public mental health system by shifting resources away from large institutions towards community-based mental health treatment programs. Soon after the passage of this law, the Department created the Central Oklahoma Community Mental Health Center (COCMHC), which was the first facility of its kind in the United States
Services
The Department provides services through a statewide network of programs. The core of the system is a network of 14 community mental health centers, ten nonprofit agencies with which the ODMHSAS contracts, and four state-operated centers. The state is geographically divided into 17 service areas each served by a community mental health center (some centers serve multiple areas). Each center is responsible for providing a comprehensive array of services within its service area. However, individuals seeking services may choose to seek services anywhere in the state. This service structure is vastly different from the organization's original model for treatment in the mid-1960s, which was primarily in the form of institutionalization in large state hospitals.
On average, nearly 6,400 Oklahomans were in the state's mental hospitals on any given day. In FY13, services were provided to approximately 187,000 individuals through the ODMHSAS system, but fewer than 5 percent of required hospital care. Most treatment takes part in mental health and substance abuse outpatient programs, targeted community-based services, prevention efforts and educational initiatives.