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The State of Oklahoma's Mental Health System

Aired on Monday, June 20th.

On this edition of StudioTulsa, guest host Dr. John Schumann speaks with The Oklahoman's medical and health reporter, Jaclyn Cosgrove, a recipient of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship in Mental Health Journalism. Her project for the fellowship is focused on low-income, uninsured Oklahomans who are diagnosed with mental illness and substance use disorders.

Cosgrove has written a number of feature articles on the deficiencies of Oklahoma's mental health system, in which demand vastly exceeds the supply of beds and professionals, under the series title, "Epidemic Ignored."  She discusses the history of mental health treatment in our state, and why the number of state prison inmates with mental illness continues to increase.

Rich Fisher passed through KWGS about thirty years ago, and just never left. Today, he is the general manager of Public Radio Tulsa, and the host of KWGS’s public affairs program, StudioTulsa, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in August 2012 . As host of StudioTulsa, Rich has conducted roughly four thousand long-form interviews with local, national, and international figures in the arts, humanities, sciences, and government. Very few interviews have gone smoothly. Despite this, he has been honored for his work by several organizations including the Governor's Arts Award for Media by the State Arts Council, a Harwelden Award from the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa, and was named one of the “99 Great Things About Oklahoma” in 2000 by Oklahoma Today magazine.
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