A caller prepares to dial 988, a mental health hotline for people in crisis. (Photo by Quentin Young/Colorado Newsline)
Mental illness doesn’t check voter registration. Suicide doesn’t screen for partisanship. These crises are indiscriminate and omnipresent, cutting across class, race and creed.
Yet Oklahoma’s failure to fully fund its 988 mental health crisis hotline reveals something chilling: for many state leaders, saving lives is negotiable — so long as it’s politically inconvenient…