Details about this story

• Source: Raleigh News & Observer
• Date: February 24, 2008
• URL: Read the story
• Bylines: David Raynor , Pat Stith
• Topics: State Government , Mental Health
• Data Types: State Data
• Description/Excerpt: North Carolina's mental-health reform was supposed to improve treatment for the mentally ill and provide good value for taxpayers. It has done neither. The state has wasted at least $400 million in an ill-conceived and poorly executed plan to treat more mentally ill people in their own communities and fewer in the state's four psychiatric hospitals, a News & Observer investigation shows. Local governments, forced to stop offering treatment, were replaced by providers out to make a profit. Most of their workers were high school graduates, not licensed professionals, but the bill was stunning. In a few months, the cost of the community support program was $50 million a month, more than 10 times what the state had expected.