Plans may restore accountability to mental health system

A new wave of mental health repairs appears to have a better chance of improving services to needy patients than a badly flawed reform launched in 2001 and poorly administered in recent years.

N.C. Secretary of Health and Human Services Dempsey Benton, tabbed by Gov. Mike Easley with the task of fixing everything that went wrong, told state lawmakers Wednesday that repairing the reforms would require creating a new statewide focus on emergency services and establishing basic psychiatric services in each region of the state.

Those steps would mark a big turnaround in the delivery of key mental health services as contemplated in the previous reform movement. That reform was intended to shift the delivery of services to communities, often through private or nonprofit institutions, and reduce stays in mental health hospitals. That sort of privatization and the opportunity to receive services in local communities sounded good, but the program was flawed by poor planning, inadequate preparation, inappropriate hiring of untrained service providers and an appalling lack of after-hours and weekend services for a patient population whose needs do not abide by a 9-5 weekday schedule. (more…)