Daily News

State health official says plans in the works to place aggressive mentally ill patients in new housing

ERIC FRAZIER

efrazier@charlotteobserver.com

RALEIGH - With problems mounting in N.C. adult-care homes, the state’s top health and human services official announced plans Wednesday to create new housing for some of the centers’ most physically aggressive residents.

N.C. Health and Human Services Secretary Carmen Hooker Odom’s office is drafting plans for a new type of facility that would take in aggressive mentally ill people now housed in rest homes designed for the aged.

Concerns over mixing the mentally ill with the elderly have intensified in recent months because of high-profile cases involving adult-care residents who went missing from centers.

Critics for years have said the homes often lack proper staffing or training to care for the mentally ill, and that the mixture endangers frail geriatric residents.

But since state rules allow mentally ill people to be placed in rest homes, the centers have emerged as a convenient place to put those being moved out of large mental hospitals under the state’s mental health reform plan.

Ten days ago, a second resident in two months wandered off from one troubled Cleveland County home. The first resident, a dementia sufferer, was found dead in nearby woods. The second, who has schizophrenia, was found alive but hungry in Maggie Valley, 100 miles away.

News of Hooker Odom’s plans emerged Wednesday as a state legislative research group, the N.C. Study Commission on Aging, discussed the problem. One of Hooker Odom’s deputies told them she had decided to step up the search for solutions. (more…)

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