Obama-Cooper deal moved seriously mentally ill out of institutions and into our neighborhoods

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In the wake of recent news involving actions by seriously mentally ill people, many are asking: “Why wasn’t this person locked away in a facility? Why are they out roaming free?”

For some answers, let’s travel back to 2010.  Democrat Bev Perdue was our governor. Roy Cooper was our attorney general. Republicans had just taken over the North Carolina General Assembly. Obama was in The White House. Republicans were on the verge of taking over on Capitol Hill.  And THIS was happening:

On August 23, 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice and the State of North Carolina announced the settlement of a lawsuit concerning North Carolina’s inadequate provision of housing for people with mental illness. The settlement is designed to ensure that North Carolina’s mental health service system is in compliance with federal law, including the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

The case arose from a complaint filed by Disability Rights North Carolina in June 2010 alleging that the State was disproportionately placing individuals with mental illness in Adult Care Homes (ACH) rather than in more integrated community settings, as required by federal law. As a result of that complaint, on July 28, 2011, the DOJ issued a finding that North Carolina had “fail[ed] to provide services to individuals with mental illness in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs in violation of the ADA,” and that “[r]eliance on unnecessary institutional settings violates the civil rights of people with disabilities.” […] 

“Most integrated setting” is lawyer-talk for putting them out there among all of us, smack-dab in the middle of our neighborhoods. 

Here’s the full text of the settlement agreement. 

Here’s a review of the settlement proceedings from 2013.

It was about this same time that the state was starting to shut down the historic Dorothea Dix hospital in Raleigh, which had — for more than a century — housed some of our state’s more serious mental illness cases.

I was teaching college courses at the time.  One of my assignments was to teach societal-reentry courses at a nearby minimum security prison.  This was a facility for inmates close to the end of their sentences. The course material was intended to provide the inmates with some lawful skills they could use as they attempted to re-enter society.

I remember one day when busloads of new inmates began arriving at the prison.  Something was different about them.  Many were having discussions with invisible people.  Some were having arguments with nearby block walls.  I was told these people were being transferred over from Dix Hospital.

They couldn’t stay in prison forever.  What was the plan for them post-release? Wait for them to stress out, snap, and do something to get thrown back into the penal system? 

The City of Raleigh got a new park at the Dix hospital site.  Mentally-ill folks who used to reside at Dix were being lumped right into a prison population full of plain ol’ thieves, drug dealers, and assailants. (*What could go wrong?*)

The transition of seriously mentally ill folks from institutions out into the communities has been carried out and overseen by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.

  Expenses for rent and furnishings for the new accommodations for these people were – of course – to be picked up by the taxpayers. (And they STILL are.)