Cleveland County veterans lose access to federal VA mental health care while in jail - The Oklahoma Daily

Correction: The following story was updated at 1:30 p.m. on Jan. 31. The original version of the story inaccurately claimed Rod Cleveland said there were 'no mental health resources' available for incarcerated veterans. The story has been updated to accurately reflect Cleveland's quotes and also added in comment from Cleveland County's Sheriff. 

Around 27,500 veterans reside in Cleveland County, many of whom go unidentified day-to-day but often face mental health issues.

When these issues go unaddressed, veterans sometimes find themselves within the walls of the Cleveland County Jail, where access mental health services becomes more limited, Cleveland County commissioner Rod Cleveland said.

Once veterans are incarcerated they lose access to federal benefits, but can still receive mental health care from specialists at the Cleveland county jail, Cleveland said.

In August 2018, Cleveland was invited to the White House to discuss prominent issues within the Norman community and said his main focus was finding a way to provide increased mental health services for incarcerated veterans at a local level. However, limited progress has been made on the issue so far due to ongoing mental health funding issues within the state.

“I was just looking for a way to help these guys out if they can’t bail out and they’re still sitting in our jail and they have medical issues,” Cleveland said. “If a veteran is arrested, they pretty much lose all their veteran benefits while they’re in jail.”

Bonnie Peruttzi, executive director of Transition House, a nonprofit organization which helps provide mental health care services in Norman, said the effects the Norman community is currently seeing are what she feared a year ago when the state was facing a $75 million deficit and considering cuts to services.

Although not as drastic as originally feared, several organizations like Transition House have had their state funds slashed within the last year, landing several mental health patients in prison rather than treatment facilities, Peruttzi said.

“Imagine if you had diabetes and you had a problem, so you go to the hospital, but instead of going to the hospital, they take you to jail,” Peruttzi said. “I mean how is diabetes going to get better if every time you get a symptom of it, you go to jail? The same is true with mental illness and addiction, and that’s what we’re doing now.” 

While a jail isn’t a treatment facility, Cleveland county Sheriff Todd Gibson hasn’t ignored the need for mental health services, Cleveland county sheriff’s office public information officer Joy Hampton said.

Since his appointment to office, Gibson has worked to provide mental health services for jail residents and in November 2018, he hired a social worker who is trained to identify those in need and help connect them with services, Hampton said.

Some veterans return from war and are very vocal about the post-traumatic stress they face. However, it’s the people who say they’re fine that Cleveland County veterans coordinator Mark Braley worries about.

These veterans will say things like, “I just killed a three-year-old kid, but I’m fine,” Braley said.

“You’re not fine,” said Braley, who is a veteran himself. “Those are the guys who are going to have to work through it, hopefully not resulting in self-destructive behavior like drinking and drug abuse, things like that.”

However, this is often the case. Peruttzi said unaddressed underlying trauma and mental illness associated with being a veteran often leads to substance abuse.

“For these folks that are vets, or just anybody across the board, what we’ve seen is a trend and a pattern that in society, it’s very unacceptable to be experiencing symptoms of mental illness,” Peruttzi said. “But to be drunk, to be high, to be impaired is a more acceptable societal norm, sadly.”

With the use of illegal substances, legal issues follow. On record, 81 percent of veterans who are in trouble with the law in Oklahoma have a substance abuse issue prior to incarceration.

At the Cleveland County Jail, as with most jails across the nation, there is no record kept of how many veterans are within the facility, Braley said. Unless the individual self-reports their veteran status, they are no different from the other prisoners.

Unidentified veterans within the Cleveland County facility face the consequences of an abrupt stop to their medication, Peruttzi said.

“If somebody goes into jail — and we’ve had this happen with our clients — they suddenly have to stop medication because a jail is not a hospital,” Peruttzi said. “It’s not the jail’s fault, but they don’t have sufficient staffing to be able to provide medication for those folks in jail.”

Things go from bad to worse in these situations, Braley said. Incarceration only exacerbates the post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety veterans often face.

“They feel like they can’t talk to anybody because they’re not going to get it. I could tell you all about war, but you are not going to get it. You didn’t experience it,” Braley said. “These guys are in there, and no one shares their experiences. It can cause some behavior problems or depression.”

Even upon their release back into society, individuals are still haunted by the consequences of incarceration, Peruttzi said. One of her clients has had trouble finding a job due to his arrest records, she said.

“A lot of people when they see this assume 'hardened criminal, dangerous person,' and this is one of the kindest guys you’ll ever meet,” Peruttzi said. “Because of his mental health condition and the way he chose to manage it at that point — or he wasn’t able to get the treatment so he wasn’t managing it well — he ended up now with legal issues he can’t just make go away.”

Cleveland said the county is hoping to develop a veterans court, which would work as an alternative to imprisonment by offering those convicted of felonies treatment programs in which their progress is monitored and they eventually reintegrate into society, similar to a drug court.

Several counties within Oklahoma and other states already have veterans courts. However, Cleveland County does not.

Peruttzi said members of the Cleveland County Mental Health Task Force have also been looking for remedies to the problem, but it is not going to be a simple fix, and until then veterans and others with unaddressed mental health issues will continue to face the consequences.

“Once folks get into prison and they’ve been there too long, they establish that prison mentality of survivalism, and it goes from bad to worse,” Peruttzi said. “The system has been damaged for so many years that it’s going to take a lot more than a couple of Band-Aids to fix this.”

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