TULSA, Okla. — The Tulsa County District Attorney is pushing the state to dedicate more money and more staff to deal with mental health issues in Oklahoma.
Steve Kunzweiler was with his wife and youngest daughter when they shared their personal story at the Tulsa Country Club Tuesday afternoon.
“She is one of the most compassionate and well-intentioned persons we know,” Kunzweiler said.
In an emotional moment in front of the Republican Women’s Club of Tulsa County, Kunzweiler talked about his daughter Jennifer.
“For my daughter, we know in 2018 domestic violence in Nashville was what really started things rolling in a bad way,” Kunzweiler said.
Jennifer Kunzweiler is sitting in the Tulsa County Jail right now, after being accused of stabbing her father last September.
Kunzweiler, his wife Christine, and their youngest daughter Jackie hope speaking about Jennifer’s struggle with mental illness will help push lawmakers to do more to help other families.
“Make it a state where we’re going to protect our citizens,” Kunzweiler said. “Make it a state where we’re going to protect them. We can do it. We just have to be able to say that we’re going to make that a priority.”
The district attorney had several specific steps that he said could help solve this problem in our state:
- Provide scholarships and incentives to keep current students in-state to help take care of our issues
- Intensify and concentrate resources to ensure that a person who needed in-patient stabilization will receive immediate and continuous out-patient counseling and medication monitoring
- Duplicate what’s already working in other states and lift regulations that prevent Oklahoma’s qualified mental health counselors from doing the work they’re doing successfully in other jurisdictions
- Provide funding to make sure the emergency health services that are available in bigger cities in Tulsa are available in all areas of the state
- Eliminate the housing of the mentally ill within jail facilities and build facilities with adequate capacity and staffing
- Increase funding to assist court systems to deal with mental health crisis
- Establish a blue ribbon commission to tackle the hard topics and implement the programs the commission recommends
Cyndy Purgason who attended the luncheon says she agrees.
“I had no idea that we were so overwhelmed in our jail populations that we really need to be able to separate out the mentally ill into their own facilities so they can have better care,” Purgason said.
Kunzweiler says there are dozens of people in local jails that are waiting to go to the Oklahoma Forensic Center in Vinita to get the help they need. He wants lawmakers to make this a priority.
For Jackie Kunzweiler, she said wants to make sure her sister is known for more than her mental illness.
“That’s something that I want her to be thought of,” Jackie Kunzweiler said. “Not just as a mentally ill person with a specific set of symptoms but as somebody who might struggle with this but also she’s an artist and she loves music and she loves the outdoors and not somebody who is defined by that narrative that has been set for her.”
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