RALEIGH — After years of denying his role in the 2006 beating of a mental patient at Cherry Hospital, a former staff member of the Goldsboro mental facility admitted guilt today.

Billy Gerald Wynn Jr. pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault on a handicapped person. A Wayne County judge then sentenced Wynn, who is suffering from medical problems related to kidney failure, to a suspended sentence of 75 days in jail and 24 months of supervised probation.

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The notion that good government must be open and transparent, answering to informed and empowered citizens, was fundamental to America’s creation. The Founding Fathers made that clear.

Yet to this day, many elected leaders and government staffers in Charlotte and across the state and nation strive to keep the people’s business a secret. An N.C. Supreme Court ruling handed down Thursday powerfully reaffirms the sanctity of a government of the people, by the people and for the people. A fight brewing in the N.C. Senate, though, points to politicians’ continuing resistance to that concept.

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RALEIGH — Many Christian ministries help the homeless people who hang out around Moore Square in downtown Raleigh.

Love Wins is best defined by what it doesn’t do.

It doesn’t invite homeless people to church.

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WASHINGTON: ”Lisa” is not an actor. She is one of many Americans willing to put their name to a drug and whose reassuring voice sells it to others.

Perched comfortably on a couch, the North Carolina woman tells TV viewers she was a smoker for 29 years

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Is the midst of a shaky recovery from the state’s worst economic turndown in modern history the right time to take on nearly a half-billion dollars in additional public debt – without the public’s OK? No.

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A Forsyth County judge has found a man who was charged with murder more than 12 years ago competent to stand trial.

Judge William Z. Wood of Forsyth Superior Court made the ruling yesterday after a hearing on Albert B. “Poochie” Conrad, who was charged in 1997 with first-degree murder in the shooting death of Clyde M. Parks.

In 1998, prosecutors voluntarily dismissed the murder charge after Judge Peter McHugh ruled that Conrad was incompetent to stand trial. McHugh ordered Conrad to be sent to a state mental hospital for treatment.

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Joshua Ryan Smith wanted to die on March 11, 2009, his attorney said yesterday.

Authorities said he fired a shotgun 20 times during a standoff that day with police at his parents’ house off Peace Haven Road, taunting police to shoot him.

They didn’t.

“They (police officers) treated this as a mental-health crisis instead of a mad bomber,” said Pete Clary, Smith’s attorney.

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Cody Trivette survived a rare cancer at age 12 only to become so anxious and depressed that he tried to kill himself.

Cody, now 17, is one of six children who remain in a treatment unit at Dorothea Dix Hospital that is set to be closed at the end of June because of budget cuts.

Robin and Eric Trivette, who live in the tiny mountain community of Sugar Grove, say the Dix program is the only place where their son has shown improvement. They fear what might happen when he is forced to go to another facility.

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The Inter-Faith Council is proposing to relocate its men’s homeless shelter to the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Homestead Road, a location that it describes as “perfect.” Neighboring citizens, however, almost all of whom support the concept of homeless shelters and many of whom have contributed money and/or time to the IFC, have raised legitimate concerns, a common thread of which is the likely impact on the quality of the neighborhood, particularly on safety and security.

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InAsad truism of our court system is that juvenile offenders often become adult offenders. Leaders in Forsyth County are incorporating a national program, Reclaiming Futures, that aims to break that cycle by getting the offenders off alcohol and drugs. With public support, this program could work — and improve our community in the process.

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There has been a surge in uninsured Americans in the past 2½ years because of record-high unemployment rates, according to economists and health-care officials. That has more people dependent on high-cost health-insurance products, such as from the COBRA health-insurance law — the federally backed plan that extends coverage for people who lose their jobs.

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The case of Kenneth Jermaine Chapman was horrific enough. But Sunday’s stories in the Observer on Mecklenburg County’s mental health system raise the terrifying prospect that many more Chapmans may not be getting the help they need. We must tackle our overwhelmed mental health system now, or more tragedies await.

Chapman was the Charlotte man who sought psychiatric help at Carolinas Medical Center-Randolph, at one point telling staff he wanted to “kill his wife,” but was released with medication for depression and instructions to call back for an appointment. Hours later, police say he had killed his wife, one child and a stepchild.

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State lawmakers say the pension system needs serious review after a former director of a regional mental health center became the state’s top public pensioner despite running his agency into the ground.

Last year, Charles R. Franklin Jr., 68, of Greenville became the recipient of the largest pension among state and local government employees at $211,373 annually. He started collecting his retirement checks just as the state Department of Health and Human Services took over his agency, the Albemarle Mental Health Center in northeastern North Carolina, for failing to meet basic standards of service.

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In 2005, Charles R. Franklin Jr . filed for retirement after running the Albemarle Mental Health Center for 34 years. The first and only director of the public agency serving northeastern North Carolina – one of the state’s poorest areas – started collecting an annual pension of $145,000.

But Franklin didn’t really retire. He returned to the center as a contract employee, with pay and perks totaling $289,000 one year and $319,000 the next. When the state Treasurer’s Office learned of the arrangement, it said the contract violated state law; he was forced to return the pension funds he had received.

The lucrative deal caught the attention of news reporters and the state auditor, and suddenly everyone knew about the free spending and mediocre service of Franklin’s center. By early 2009 he had been fired. The center was shuttered, a victim of mismanagement, lavish benefits and financial conflicts of interest.

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The region’s mental health provider is asking that three properties owned by Albemarle Mental Health Center become its property under a proposed consolidation agreement.
East Carolina Behavioral Health wants the AMHC properties in Perquimans, Camden and Dare counties but isn’t likely to get them without giving up something in return, a local official says.

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Growing demand on Mecklenburg County’s mental health system has made it harder for dangerously ill patients to get the help they need, an Observer investigation found.

With perennial overcrowding at the county’s 66-bed psychiatric facility, some patients who threaten themselves or others are instead given medicine and sent home – sometimes with disastrous results.

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HENDERSON, N.C. — The Vance County mother of an 11-year-old boy with special needs says her son was forced to miss his fifth-grade graduation because of the clothes he was wearing.

Jack Morgan said Friday that he was disappointed over not being allowed to attend the graduation and awards ceremony on Thursday at Aycock Elementary School in Henderson.

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Oscar-nominated actress Mariel Hemingway will be the keynote speaker at a mental health conference in Wrightsville Beach this fall.

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The Sandhills Center has announced that it has been awarded national accreditation for the following programs: Health Network, Health Utilization Management and Health Call Center from URAC, a Washington, DC-based health care accrediting organization that establishes quality standards for the health care industry.

“We are pleased to have achieved URAC Accreditation for these important functions,” said Victoria Whitt, Chief Executive Officer of Sandhills Center.

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RALEIGH, N.C. — An employee at the state-run Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro has been fired following an incident earlier this year that put the hospital in jeopardy of losing federal funding for Medicare and Medicaid services.

Kevin Dunn was released from his position as a mental health technician after an internal investigation into a matter in April in which Dunn placed a pillow over a 22-year-old male patient’s face to help restrain him.

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Old Vineyard Behavioral Health Services has submitted to the state its plan for correcting deficiencies in its response to a sexual incident involving two male teenage residents on April 21.

Old Vineyard said that its interim director of social services has fired two mental-health counselors.

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Floyd Brown, a mentally retarded man from Wadesboro, has filed a civil lawsuit in Mecklenburg County Superior Court against two agents of the State Bureau of Investigation.

Brown was held as a prisoner at Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh for 14 years, facing a murder charge his attorneys claim was bogus. Brown, who has an IQ of 50, was caught in legal limbo after he was arrested in 1993. Doctors at Dix said he wasn’t mentally competent to stand trial, yet local prosecutors argued he was “too dangerous” to return to the community.

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The woman who was fatally shot by Union County Sheriff’s deputies Tuesday night was armed with a BB gun, her family and authorities say.

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An employee of a state mental hospital in Goldsboro was fired this week for placing a pillow over the face of a patient strapped in restraints.

Kevin Dunn, who had worked at Cherry Hospital as a health care technician for less than two years, said the patient was spitting on him when he placed the pillow over the patient for a few seconds. Dunn said he had not been trained what to do in that situation and that it’s unfair for him to lose his job.

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RALEIGH — A 28-year-old inmate at the Wake County jail hanged himself in his cell and died, Sheriff Donnie Harrison said Monday.

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