From: mha23x@gmail.com   
      
   Sun Herald | SunHerald.com   
      
      
   STATE POLITICS   
   AUGUST 11, 2016 3:15 PM   
      
   Justice Department sues Mississippi over treatment of mentally ill   
      
    For more than a century, mentally ill residents have been hospitalized at   
   Mississippi State Hospital near Jackson, also known as Whitfield after the   
   community where it is located on a 305-acre campus.   
   i   
   BY ANITA LEE   
   calee@sunherald.com   
       
       
       
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   The U.S. Justice Department filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against the state   
   over the way it treats the mentally ill.   
      
   The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Jackson says the state spends   
   millions to shut away the mentally ill in hospitals when they could be   
   provided more appropriate and helpful services at a far lower cost in their   
   communities.   
      
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   The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is asking that Judge   
   Carlton Reeves find that state treatment of the mentally ill violates the   
   Americans with Disabilities Act. The Justice Department also wants the judge   
   to order that the state’s    
   policies focus on treating the mentally ill in their communities rather than   
   hospitalizing them.   
      
   “Every day,” the lawsuit says, “hundreds of adults with mental illness   
   are unnecessarily and illegally segregated in Mississippi’s state-run   
   psychiatric hospitals or are at serious risk of entering these institutions.   
   They enter and remain in    
   these isolating institutions because the state of Mississippi has failed to   
   provide them sufficient community-based mental health services.   
      
   “While confined in these institutions, adults with mental illness are   
   unnecessarily cut off from non-disabled family and friends and others in the   
   community.”   
      
      
   The state knows about the shortcomings in mental-health care — detailed in   
   numerous reports to the Legislature — but has failed to correct them, the   
   lawsuit says.   
      
   The lawsuit says the state Mental Health Department in 2015 spent $202 million   
   on its four state hospitals and only $25 million on community-based grants.   
   Patients cycle through the hospitals over and over again, the lawsuit says,   
   some remaining for    
   years.   
      
   The estimated cost of state hospital care is $470 a day, the lawsuit says,   
   compared to $30 a day for a patient who receives intensive community-based   
   treatment.   
      
   Further, the lawsuit says, the state must fund almost all the costs of its   
   state hospitals, while the federal Medicaid program would provide matching   
   funds for community-based care.   
      
      
   Still, the state continues to pour its money into the hospitals, two of which   
   opened in the late 1800s — Mississippi State Hospital in Jackson and East   
   Mississippi State Hospital in Meridian.   
      
   In 2014, the lawsuit says, the state spent $7 million on a new dining facility   
   in Meridian and is currently spending $14 million on a new 60-bed unit and   
   mechanical building.   
      
   Anita Lee: 228-896-2331, @calee99   
      
      
   Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/news/politics-governmen   
   /state-politics/article95102232.html#storylink=cpy   
      
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