From News 14 Carolina:

Members of North Carolina’s Disability Action Network demonstrated outside a breakfast for lawmakers this week to demand major reforms in the way the state’s mental health system cares for people with disabilities.

The protest follows a rash of problems at North Carolina’s mental hospitals. At Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro recently, a patient fell after taking his medication and then sat alone for 24 hours, neglected by nurses, until he died.

“We are all one people, and when you hurt one of us, all of us are going to get upset,” Disability Action Network executive director Michael Murray said.

See also:

Patient buried before Cherry filed report to pathologist — Raleigh News & Observer

Another Cherry mishap — editorial in Raleigh News & Observer. An excerpt:

Unfortunately, Cherry’s problems are many, so many that federal officials have pulled the hospital’s accreditation, meaning the state has lost $800,000 a month in federal funding. State officials — who say they’re working on straightening out mental health although they need funds and staff beyond what the legislature is likely to provide — are working to get the money back. That’s fine, but they cannot tolerate a failure to follow the rules in any of these institutions.

Earlier post here.

See News & Observer series on the state’s mental institutions:

Mental disorder: The failure of reform

With video. (Photo from News 14)

This entry was posted on Friday, January 30th, 2009 at 12:40 pm and is filed under advocacy, civil rights, health care, hospitals, mental health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.