Mental health talks pick up in N.C.

An ongoing coversation about the treatment of mental health patients in the state has started to gain a foothold in recent years.

And last week’s shooting of a teenager in Southport who was in the midst of a schizophrenic episode has been brought up as an example of how the system needs reform.

Southport Police Chief J.V. Dove said Det. Byron Vassey shot and killed 18-year-old Keith Vidal, but would not comment on the circumstances around Vidal’s death.

Vassey is on administrative leave pending the result of an FBI investigation. The details of the investigation have not been released. Vassey has served with the Southport police for nine years, Dove said.

“The biggest challenge is that the system has been churning in chaos and change for the last 10 to 12 years. When things change constantly it’s remarkably destabilizing to people,” she said.

Dr. David Rubinow, chairman of the UNC psychiatry department, said the state needs to do more than talk about the system’s problems.

Rubinow said the state paid a consultant to evaluate the mental health system a little more than a decade ago.

The consultant reported the state spent too much per capita on hospitals, and state money should be focused on initiatives that provide mental health patients support at the community level, Rubinow said.

“The more effective care was to create capacity in the community,” he said.

The state cut funding to hospitals, but the money intended for community-based care was given to other parts of the state’s budget, Rubinow said.

“That’s the balance. The goal is to keep people out of the hospital,” he said. “You have to deliver health care and create a healthful context in their communities where they live.”

But Marc Jacques, executive director of the nonprofit N.C. Mental Health Consumer’s Organization, said the state is not focused on recovery for mental health care.

The state medicates and releases mental health patients without teaching them to take care of themselves, he said.

“They are released with absolutely no skills, leaving them to face the same stressor that brought them there,” he said.

Jacques has paranoid schizophrenia, and has spent most of his life learning to live with his disorder.

At a young age, Jacques said there was little readily available recovery information.

“How much better would it be for a young person that gets their recovery information at a young age?” he said. “It would change the course of their life.”

Still, Dihoff thinks things are improving.

She said police officers are given Crisis Intervention Training that teaches officers to bring mental health patients to treatment rather than jail.

Gov. Pat McCrory’s administration is working towards integrated patient care that combines physical and behavioral disabilities, Dihoff said.

McCrory’s administration started the Crisis Solution Initiative in November.

The initiative will bring health care and government leaders together to discuss optimal care available for mental health patients.

A coalition, which was established as part of the initiative, met for the first time in December to discuss inefficiencies in the system.

Jacques said few people with mental illnesses are disabled by it, and most live and work in society without anyone realizing they have a disorder.

“You don’t have to be sick forever,” he said.

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