Mental Health
My soon-to-be-departed colleague Nate DeGraff and I have a pair of stories regarding the state's mental health care safety net in Sunday's paper. The lede from the main bar:
HIGH POINT -- Six years into North Carolina's effort to remake its mental health safety net, the system still struggles to fix the problems that came with the overhaul.The eventual result may well be the more cost-effective, nimble and comprehensive mental health network envisioned by legislation passed in 2001, providers, advocates and analysts say.
But we're far from that goal.
Today's public mental health system cannot always provide the service a client needs or the quality of care one might expect from an agency dealing with vulnerable people. A critique of the state system recently completed for the N.C. Division of Mental Health found that too much change undertaken too quickly had shifted the focus away from patients, something that even top mental health officials say is a fair criticism.
To read the full stories:
- *Click here for the main bar.
- *Click here for Nate's story on ACT teams, a service for the most severely mentally ill folks who don't have to be in a hospital.
- *Bonus: a related column by Lorraine Ahearn.
Right now, I don't have a lot to add other than to say at least one more package regarding the state's mental health system is in the works. With luck, it will roll out later this month. That story (or stories - these things have a way of changing in the writing of them) will take a harder look at the private providers who do a lot of the care in the revamped mental health care system.