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Mental health on rise in county

Duncan Banner (OK) - 7/18/2015

July 18--Mental health is a problem in Stephens County that has increased in recent years, particularly among the incarcerated population.

Stephens County Sheriff Wayne McKinney said a majority of the about 130 inmates in the jail have some form of mental-health problem.

"A lot of it is self-imposed by the use of methamphetamine, cocaine and other serious drugs," McKinney said. "Our state has dropped the ball on mental health. There aren't a lot of mental health facilities in the state."

Deputies recently responded to about five emergency order of detention calls in one week regarding people who threatened to harm themselves or others.

Typically, such calls begin when law enforcement are dispatched to a domestic disturbance or someone who's barricaded themselves in a room.

In EOD calls, deputies transport the person to a mental-health facility for evaluation.

"It's an epidemic," McKinney said. "It's all over our state ... we spend hours negotiating with people with mental-health issues and that ties up one or two deputies for almost an entire shift."

Sometimes, facilities, such as the local Jim Taliaferro Community Mental Health Center or Duncan Regional Hospital, don't have space available for all people picked up as part of an emergency order of detention, he said.

"Once we detain these people, they're evaluated and then they're referred to Taliaferro and the process begins to see if they'll accept them," McKinney said."Our number one goal is public safety, so we try to prevent people from harming themselves or others."

Several deputies with the Stephens County Sheriff's Office attended crisis intervention training put on by the Oklahoma City Police Department to learn how to de-escalate situations in which someone threatened themselves or others.

Mental health was one of the issues the Stephens County Health Department and Duncan Regional Hospital found needed to be addressed when they put together a report about the health of Stephens County.

Statewide, the number of offenders with mental health problems within the Department of Corrections are over-represented.

The number of people in prison with symptoms of or a history of mental illness was 16,092 in 2014, or 57 percent of the prison population, according to a report.

The number of those who showed symptoms totaled to 9,432 in 2014, or 33 percent of the total prison population.

The average monthly number of crisis interventions have increased from 900 to 1,200 between 2013 and 2014, according to the Department of Corrections. However, the average monthly number of offenders seen for psychotropic medication management dropped from 2,829 in 2013 to 2,689 in 2014, according to a report.

The statewide suicide-prevention hotline is 1-800-273-8255.

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