Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services
Great Seal of Oklahoma
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| Agency overview | |
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| Formed | 1953 |
| Headquarters | 1200 NE 13 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma |
| Employees | 1,738 (FY15) |
| Annual budget | $463,819,692 (FY15) |
| Agency executive |
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| Website | Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services |
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 Board, in turn, appoints the Commissioner of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services to serve as the chief executive officer of the Department. The current Commissioner is Terri White, who was appointed by the Board in 2007.
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.
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.
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