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Legislative Oversight Committe Update Committee Website | Minutes and Handouts (including Feb. 10 meeting) |
LOC AGENDA 3/10/10 and link to listen in here. Audio/Video of previous LOC meetings available for nominal fee. |
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MORGANTON, NC – The jury in the trial of a woman accused of shooting a law enforcement officer began deliberations Wednesday, but was unable to reach a verdict by the end of the day.
Superior Court Judge Timothy Kincaid dismissed the jury shortly after 4:30 p.m. after the jury indicated it was unlikely to reach a verdict by 5 p.m.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police have launched an Internal Affairs investigation into the way an officer handled the case of a homeless man who died of exposure in January.
For 35 years, Fred Roberts has worked at the building at 717 N. Park Avenue in Burlington.
In those years, the mentally disabled 55-year-old has done a little bit of everything – from making deliveries and doing janitorial work to working in an assembly line. The pay is not much, but the fact that he’s working is more than enough.
Thursday, March 4, p.m.
Area residents with mental health issues, developmental disabilities or substance abuse problems who are experiencing a crisis will soon have somewhere to go for immediate and specialized help.
A Crisis Services Center, operated by Coastal Carolina Neuropsychiatric Center and Onslow Carteret Behavioral Health Services, opened Monday at 215 Memorial Drive in Jacksonville, the previous site of OCBH’s central access center.
In a local mental-health arena where separating facts from impassioned opinions is a constant challenge, Forsyth Futures wants to use data to spur more collaboration and improve quality of care.
Doris Paez, an associate director with Forsyth Futures, is conducting interviews with officials with at least 19 groups representing the county government, school system and other agencies, local and state advocacy groups, for-profit and nonprofit service providers, managing entities and health-care systems.
The nonprofit group expects to release the study on April 21.
The freeing of inmate Gregory Taylor wasn’t North Carolina’s sole step recently toward providing some long-denied justice. Charmaine Fuller Cooper was chosen last week as the first executive director of the N.C. Justice for Victims of Sterilization Foundation.
Her appointment didn’t get nearly the attention of Taylor’s release, but it too was a long time coming. The state’s sterilization of thousands of mental patients, now properly viewed with shame, was carried out between 1933 and 1973. Then-Gov. Mike Easley apologized for the state’s role in 2002. Last summer the legislature appropriated $250,000 to start the foundation.
The homeless population in Catawba County increased 12 percent from last year, according to the Housing Visions Continuum of Care.
The organization conducted a homeless count Jan. 27 at various locations throughout the county. People who attended the count received backpacks filled with donated food and other supplies.
MORGANTON – The defense team of the woman on trial for the shooting of a law enforcement officer on Dec. 11, 2007, presented and rested its case Monday.
Joyce Smith Nelson, 62, has pleaded not guilty by temporary insanity to attempted first-degree murder, assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury, assault on a law enforcement officer with a firearm and discharging a weapon into occupied property.
Burke County SWAT team member Martin Lawing was shot in the neck during the stand-off. He remains paralyzed from the chest down.
Nelson’s family members spoke of her history of mental illness, and expert medical witnesses outlined the history of her mental illness, which stretched back to 1979.
WINTERVILLE — Sandra Buckman is tired of seeing her daughter lose services and lose faith in the state’s system that is supposed to be in place to support her.
Buckman’s daughter has Down syndrome, and her services have changed significantly during the last few years as a result of mental health reform in North Carolina, the economic downturn and service cuts. So she’s speaking out.
A 23-year-old Gastonia man charged with raping a young woman in her home last year was deemed too mentally incompetent to stand trial Monday.
In January, Gaston County public defender Samantha Reichbach submitted an order requesting a mental competency review for Darrell Matthew Gore, of 2418 Rogers Avenue. Reichbach was appointed to represent Gore, who is charged with second-degree rape and first-degree burglary for an incident that occurred just after 10:30 p.m. Nov. 24.
What happened: The board committed $180,000 for design of a revamped and reopened inpatient mental health facility in Erwin. The county, the town of Erwin and Sandhills Mental Health are applying jointly for grants to cover the $2 million cost of reopening the 16-bed facility at the shuttered Good Hope Hospital in Erwin.
Why are those people from South Carolina housed in North Carolina adult care homes? Some of them couldn’t tell you.
“Why am I here?” “How did I get here?” and “I want to go home,” are some of the things South Carolinians have been heard to say, Barbara Hinshaw, an ombudsman at Land-of-Sky Regional Council, told Buncombe County commissioners.
The Buncombe County Department of Health began scaling back the centers last year. The nurse practitioner position was reduced to part-time, and the centers also lost their mental health therapists.
ASHEVILLE — When Mikaela Bartow wasn’t feeling well one recent morning, the sixth-grader visited the health center at Erwin Middle School.
Health center workers were able to do a test for strep throat, get the results back right away and call in a prescription that would be waiting for Mikaela’s mom.
“It’s wonderful,” said Mikaela’s mom Christie Bartow, who had been trying all day to reach the doctor. “She (Mikaela) has seen these wonderful women (at the health center), and they’ve already got her medicine at the store.
o the Editor: Youths placed in out-of-home settings often receive mental health services from several sectors of care, but the extent to which they use hospital emergency services is uncertain (1). Better information on the use of emergency services in this population merits attention because such services are costly and disruptive to families.
We used Medicaid Analytic Extract (MAX) claims from North Carolina to examine the use of hospital emergency departments among a statewide population of youths under age 22 who received out-of-home care in congregate residential treatment and family-type residential treatment (often referred to as therapeutic foster care) during calendar year 2003 (N=2,937). MAX claims contain the age, race or ethnicity, gender, Medicaid eligibility category, and a primary ICD-9-CM diagnosis.
Watch the documentary Thursday, March 4, at 7 p.m. on WRAL.
The suicide rate among Army soldiers hit a record high in 2009 and for the first time ever exceeded the rate in the civilian population. Many blame Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. PTSD is an adverse reaction to traumatic events that can cause irritability, anxiety, sleeplessness and depression. It became a formal diagnosis in 1980 and since then new types of medications and psychotherapy have been developed that are effective in treating the disorder. Getting soldiers to seek treatment is a challenge however. Many soldiers fear that others will see them as weak for having PTSD and many fear it will hurt their military careers.
Feb. 26, 2010 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) — Bobby Murphy took his wife to the emergency room to be treated for bronchitis. He left four days later with stitches in his lip and a broken ankle.
Murphy, 64, and his wife, Catherine, 55, went to Wilson Medical Center’s emergency room around 12:30 p.m. Feb. 18.
While waiting to be seen by a doctor, Murphy, his wife, a security guard and maintenance hospital employee were all assaulted by 32-year-old Cedric Newton, according to the Wilson police incident report.
Charges against Newton are pending, police said.
Newton’s mother, Japhaine Newton, told The Times Wednesday her son was diagnosed 12 years ago with bipolar disorder with psychotic episodes.
The mental health system remains in near-crisis mode and still can’t serve all those in need.
This will be one of those every-other-year “short” sessions in which the General Assembly convenes in May rather than January. Be assured, the legislators will not run short of rock-hard budget issues. The outlines of another fiscal crunch have already taken shape.
Last week Gov. Beverly Perdue and others cautioned that the revenue outlook continues to be generally bleak. Perdue’s conclusion: “The state has got to shed services that are not core to our mission,” she told mayors meeting in Wilmington. “I’m going to look at consolidating pieces of state government.” Too many of us know where such consolidation often leads – layoffs. There’s talk of a $500 million gap between estimated revenues and expenses.
Catawba Valley Behavioral Healthcare, the area’s lead mental health agency, will soon move to two buildings now being renovated in downtown Hickory.
The nonprofit group serves about 5,000 clients in Catawba and Burke counties. The move from its current location near Catawba Valley Medical Center should be complete in late March.
The Albemarle-based, non-profit group Monarch is taking over operation and management of a variety of mental health services in and around Richmond County from the Mental Health Association of North Carolina. That includes a six-bed group home and two 10-bed apartment complexes in Richmond County.
Amy Lambert looked at her cup of fat-free yogurt and painstakingly ate every bite. She began to panic, and in one quick motion the empty cup hit the trashcan and Lambert was lacing her running shoes. She spent the next hour burning the 100 calories she had just consumed—and the others her body was desperate to store for survival. But running was her only comfort for the overwhelming loss of control eating made her feel.
The skies turned the color of a plum, and the nurses herded several of us away from the windows in the day room and under a table. We were all ill and frail. I felt depleted, having traveled all night to this hospital, where, trying to save myself, I had checked into the eating disorders unit. “Only to get blown away by a tornado,” I thought.
But the storm passed. That evening, I had my first real meal in at least a month. This was Day One.
When I read Amy Lambert’s story of her struggle with an eating disorder, I recognized myself. I remember that summer 24 years ago—my senses dulled from malnutrition, my muscles atrophied from lying in bed for most of six months—when hospitalization was the last resort.
CHAPEL HILL — Like society at large, faith communities often struggle with the complexities of mental illness – how to know, how to help, what to say.
Recognizing the need for better insight, a multi-congregational organization called Faith Connections on Mental Illness convened a forum at Binkley Baptist Church this past Sunday titled “Faith, Hope and Love: When One Suffers from a Mental Illness.” This was the second year the forum was held. Approximately a hundred people attended.
A panel of clergy members and advocates, including recipients of mental health care services, stressed the importance of accepting that a person can appear “normal” while experiencing deep-seated pain, and that the best therapy a minister or fellow churchgoer can provide is acceptance and inclusion.
Charlotte has nearly double the national average of homeless people visiting hospitals more than three times a year – and it’s costing the community millions of dollars.
That startling fact is one of many revelations that came from a ground-breaking homeless survey held this week by the Urban Ministry Center, using a $10,000 grant from the Charlotte Housing Authority.
Education, construction spending, mental illness and child abuse or neglect programs topped board priorities. At the bottom were areas like historic preservation, personal injury programs and financial planning.
If Mecklenburg County commissioners left their retreat Friday with a message, it was this:
Times are tough.
They’re not likely to get better soon.
So be prepared for residents to not like many choices you make during the next 10 months.
Click here to view the video of Kris Parks presentation at the NAMI Western Carolina meeting January 19. She is making presentations for a combined effort of Disability Rights North Carolina and fellow advocacy organizations concerning proposed legislation that would exempt those with a severe mental disability from the death penalty. With support from a generous grant from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, DRNC is working both to educate our citizens about the reasons it is fair and just to exclude such persons from capital punishment and in so doing, to raise awareness about mental illness.
For more information about this initiative and to contact Kris to speak to your group or organization, click here.We hope we've helped make a difference and hope to make one for many years to come. Needless to say, your support is deeply appreciated from the heart.
Our appreciation as always for the generous support of the A.J. Fletcher Foundation.
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