Reforming Mental Health Reform
Tuesday, April 01 2008
by Frank Stasio and Katy Barron
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North Carolina enacted mental health reform legislation in 2001. Under reform, clinical services for treatment and rehabilitation were privatized and counties became managers of those contracts. It hasn’t worked. Seven years after reform, money has been wasted, critical services have been neglected and people’s lives have been upended.
Reforming the reform will be a key challenge for the government leaders who are voted into office in November. But getting the electorate to understand the problem is the first hurdle. Host Frank Stasio discusses the past, present and future of mental health reform in North Carolina with: Marvin Swartz, professor and head of social and community psychiatry at Duke's school of medicine; Susie Deter, executive director of Threshold Clubhouse in Durham; News and Observer Investigative Reporter Pat Stith; and, Rose Hoban, WUNC’s health reporter.
