By Chris Fitzsimon
The special session of the General Assembly is over, state lawmakers are back home, and the executives and stockholders of Goodyear and Bridgestone Firestone are no doubt celebrating, toasting their lobbyists and looking forward to their millions in cash grants from the state treasury of North Carolina.
Say what you want about the troubling incentive package, in retrospect its passage was a foregone conclusion. The overheated rhetorical exchanges between Gov. Mike Easley and legislative leaders made for good political gossip, but when corporate interests and their influential lobbyists come calling, it is a rare day indeed when top state officials don’t respond and work together to keep the companies happy.
The most poignant reminder of the power of money and influence came Wednesday morning in two headlines of the News & Observer. “Tire makers win state incentives,†the front page said over a story about the $60 million corporate welfare package and its breezy trip through the General Assembly.
In the bottom right-hand corner of page one was a headline about another issue that affects thousands of people and hasn’t yet gained the urgency that corporate executives bring when they call the Commerce Department or a top legislative leader.
The other headline said, “2nd N.C. mental hospital may lose federal funds,†and it details how the federal government is considering withholding funds from Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro because of questions about patient care.
Federal officials have already suspended funding for Broughton Hospital for problems with the care provided for the mentally ill. The problems with the hospitals are distressing enough on their own.
Add them to the overwhelming struggles faced by people with mental illness across the state as a result of the mess that is misnamed mental health reform and it is hard to understand how state officials can sleep at night.
The federal government believes that two of our mental hospitals are unsafe. Patients aren’t faring much better in their communities, where the reform efforts promised services would be available.
Last March, a News & Observer story revealed the revolving-door admissions and discharges at the hospitals that prompted a federal investigation and convinced some families that their loved ones’ suicides were partially the result of the hospitals’ rush to discharge them back to communities that had no services to help.
Mental Health director Michael Moseley told the N&O at the time that what happens after patients are discharged is not the hospitals’ fault, that the problem is a lack of services at the local level. Seems like he might have spoken up about that and tried to save some lives.
Advocates for the mentally ill will tell you that services have not improved much since March, and many patients are still released into their communities with no real plan for treatment and in some cases with no services available to treat them.
The state is moving ahead with plans to close Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh and Umstead Hospital in Butner and shift the patients to the new Central Regional Hospital in Butner. In case you wonder if the transition is being handled smoothly, there are also plans for a 100-bed temporary overflow unit adjacent to the new hospital.
Apparently building a hospital that was big enough on its own was not an option. Neither so far is keeping Dix Hospital open until the reality of mental health reform catches up with the rhetoric about it.
Patients rushing in and out of mental hospitals is a recipe for tragedy, especially when plans for further treatment are spotty and services are inadequate. Former Health and Human Services Secretary Carmen Hooker Odom last month sent an overdue report to legislators about the transition to the new hospital, and it hardly inspires confidence.
Mental health advocates see Odom’s plan as yet another example of the disconnect between families desperate for mental health services and the state officials who are charged with making sure they are provided. On department letterhead it may seem like hospital closings and other reform efforts are making some progress in improving the state’s mental health system.
But in many families’ lives, reform has become another word for frustration and despair.
Finding adequate services in many communities is impossible or at least extraordinarily difficult. Now comes word that the hospitals aren’t safe either and state officials are admitting that the new hospital will be overcrowded and it hasn’t even opened yet.
It’s no wonder that people with mental illness have lost faith in this administration’s ability to do anything to help them. Dempsey Benton was sworn in recently as the new secretary of Health and Human Services and he has his work cut out for him.
But it shouldn’t be impossible. After all, it only took two days for lawmakers and the administration to come with a plan to give $60 million to a handful of corporations.