Nov. 20--Georgia's state-run psychiatric hospitals continue to have serious problems, and a recent Department of Justice visit to the largest facility -- Central State Hospital in Milledgeville -- led the hospital to stop taking new patients indefinitely.

The hospital will remain open, but new mentally ill and physically disabled patients are being diverted to the state's other facilities, said Thomas Wilson, communications director for the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities.

Federal investigators visited Central State about two weeks ago as part of a follow-up to an ongoing investigation of all the state's psychiatric hospitals. The team found many of the same problems that have troubled the state's mental health system for years. Their investigation stems from a 2007 expose by The Atlanta Journal Constitution, which reported on more than 100 suspicious deaths in state-run hospitals since 2002, and the state continues to face a potential federal takeover of the hospitals if it can't show improvement.

"There were some pretty urgent things that they had pointed out," Wilson said of the most recent DOJ visit to Central State, "most of those that we were aware of that we were working toward fixing."

Wilson said the DOJ didn't issue a written report about the visit, but he explained the three main areas of concern, which he said the DOJ spelled out verbally:

n Problems with the facility's "physical environment." These facilities need to be designed so there aren't items patients can hurt themselves with. That can be as simple as not having faucets with right angles on them that can be used as an anchor for a rope, Wilson said.

n A need to upgrade and modernize treatment methods to improve readmission rates and other success measures.

n Problems with aggression among patients. The facility needs better assessment tools to figure out who is likely to hurt themselves or others, as well as increased supervision for problem patients.

A Department of Justice spokeswoman declined to comment on the visit, citing department policy on open cases.

But when it comes to "patient aggression," Central State's problems have been bad enough that a patient died this spring in the facility's Cook Building, an off-campus maximum security building.

Another patient was charged with murder in the incident, and an investigation determined he was not properly supervised, despite already facing a previous murder charge from a killing in an Atlanta jail.

Central State has had staffing problems for years and that remains a challenge, Wilson said. Current figures were not immediately available Thursday, but in 2007 state figures showed a 23 percent vacancy rate in the hospital's staff and nearly a 42 percent vacancy rate in licensed practical and registered nursing jobs.

Wilson said his department will seek more funding in the coming year to address staffing issues at its hospitals and to develop an electronic records system to help it share records among facilities and with the state's Department of Corrections and Department of Juvenile Justice. Whether it will get that money in a state budget that already has been cut by the billions and may withstand more cuts before the economy rebounds remains to be seen.

"It's very difficult," said Bert Brantley, communications director for Gov. Sonny Perdue, who will make a budget proposal in January.

"As we sit here today, there's just no way to know what January is going to look like."

Brantley noted that in the last round of budget cuts the state's mental hospitals were spared.

"(That system) needs to be improved, and we need to do a better job," Brantley said.

State Rep. DuBose Porter, the Democratic minority leader in the Georgia House from Dublin and a 2010 candidate for governor, said Perdue's administration has not made mental health enough of a priority.

Porter said the state is handling mental health in "the most expensive way" by allowing jails and emergency rooms to fill with people who need psychiatric treatment.

Porter said more funding is needed and again called for changes in the way the state collects sales taxes to fund it.

Porter and other supporters have said the state can scoop up $1 billion or more in unpaid taxes by giving local governments more power over sales collections now handled by the Georgia Department of Revenue.

The Perdue administration and the Republican-controlled state Legislature have looked at this option. But the problem is that businesses with locations in multiple counties would end up dealing with dozens of local governments and the private companies they hire to handle collections instead of just the state's Department of Revenue, Brantley said.

To contact writer Travis Fain, call 744-4213.

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