Georgia Asking Feds To End Oversight Of Mental Health Services

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April 1st, 2019

The oversight role stems from a 2010 settlement agreement between the state and the Justice Department. In that landmark pact, Georgia agreed to improve conditions in its psychiatric hospitals and provide robust community services for people with mental illness and those with developmental or intellectual disabilities. The most recent reports by an independent reviewer of the settlement agreement, however, point to continued deficiencies in Georgia’s current delivery system.

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Early this year, in the waning days of his tenure as Georgia governor, Nathan Deal wrote the U.S. Department of Justice a four-page letter, asking for an end to federal oversight of the state’s mental health and developmental disabilities system.

The oversight role stems from a 2010 settlement agreement between the state and the Justice Department. In that landmark pact, Georgia agreed to improve conditions in its psychiatric hospitals and provide robust community services for people with mental illness and those with developmental or intellectual disabilities.

“Georgia has made tremendous improvements in the quantity, quality and availability of community-based services,’’ Deal wrote in his Jan. 8 letter, obtained by GHN through an Open Records Act request.

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