>>Recent incident highlights abuse, neglect of children in NC psychiatric facilities

If the true test of government is how it treats its most vulnerable members, then North Carolina is failing. Children are suffering inside health care facilities that are meant to help them, and too often the state appears to be doing very little about it.

A new report from North Carolina Health News tells the story of an 11-year-old girl from Durham who was admitted to Brynn Marr Hospital, a psychiatric facility in in the eastern part of the state, when she began having suicidal thoughts. The week she spent at Brynn Marr left her traumatized — it was desolate, terrifying and she was reportedly sexually assaulted by an older patient.

Her parents filed a complaint with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, citing poor communication, a lack of adequate care and unsafe conditions at the facility.

The department, according to NC Health News, dismissed the complaint, saying “we do not believe an investigation is warranted at this time.” DHHS later said it would reopen the issue and schedule an investigation, but only after state Rep. Graig Meyer got involved by emailing DHHS Secretary Kody Kinsley.

This is not an isolated incident — and it is not a new one, either. Harrowing stories of mistreatment at psychiatric facilities are unfortunately common, but change and accountability are rare.

Complaints go unaddressed and uninvestigated. In the event an investigation does happen and deficiencies are found, the penalty is often little more than a slap on the wrist — a fine or a “plan of correction” that’s worth about as much as the paper it’s printed on. And all the while, these for-profit facilities continue to financially benefit from a “treatment” process that so egregiously fails the patients it is supposed to help.

Many patients at these facilities are committed involuntarily — a process which itself is overly callous. It means being handcuffed in a police car and transported to a treatment facility, where neither the patient nor their parent or guardian has the right to make health decisions. In North Carolina, there has been a staggering rise in involuntary commitments over the past decade — a spike that’s intertwined with a burgeoning mental health crisis that has a particularly acute effect on children.

Police have received 117 phone calls with reports of sexual assault or rape at Brynn Marr over the last three and a half years, according to local police records obtained by NC Health News. Brynn Marr has also received a number of citations from the state dating back several years, including a failure to report serious incidents — such as a patient attempting suicide — to state agencies as required by North Carolina law.

Across North Carolina, similar problems exist. A sweeping investigation published last year by the USA Today North Carolina Network detailed the desolate and inhumane conditions in psychiatric facilities for children across the state. The investigation found that few patients receive the care they need, and many of them suffer abuse at the hands of staff or fellow patients.

DHHS finally shut down a psychiatric facility in Garner after years of violations that endangered and traumatized patients, The News & Observer reported last year.

It doesn’t just happen in North Carolina. Brynn Marr is owned by Universal Health Services, a large for-profit company that owns hundreds of facilities across the country, including two other mental health treatment centers in North Carolina. Universal Health Services has faced scrutiny from federal regulators as well as Congress for allegations of mistreatment and neglect at its behavioral health facilities. Most of these facilities receive taxpayer funded payments from Medicare and Medicaid, which means they are subject to oversight by state and federal regulators.

But where is the regulation? How and why does this continue to happen, and why haven’t officials done something to stop it?

That hundreds of children continue to suffer inside these facilities is a dereliction of duty on the part of DHHS and the legislators who fund it. That it would require the power and influence of a state lawmaker to trigger an investigation into the sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl while she was in someone else’s care is shameful.