RESIDENTIAL MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

The North Carolina Department of Correction provides long-term residential mental health services for seriously chronic mentally ill inmates at four facilities. Adult male felon inmates who have long-standing mental illnesses are housed at Eastern Correctional Institution (near Maury, NC), Hoke Correctional Institution (in McCain, NC), and Foothills Correctional Institution (in Morganton, NC). In addition, youthful offenders with chronic mental illnesses are also housed at the Foothills correctional facility, and female felon offenders who need long-term residential treatment are housed at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women (in Raleigh, NC).

Treatment and activity programming is analogous to that provided at state psychiatric hospitals in the community and includes individual and group psychotherapy, psychotropic medications, activity therapies, mental illness education and relapse prevention training, and social skills training.

Inmates who make a satisfactory extended adjustment within the residential program but who continue to require frequent intervention by mental health staff may be transferred into a day training program (similar to a sheltered workshop in the community). Those inmates who make a full recover to premorbid levels of functioning may be transferred back to the original prison unit from which they were initially referred. Inmates who do not show a satisfactory adjustment to the residential program or who show deterioration in their mental status are transferred to the inpatient MH unit at Central Prison (in Raleigh, NC) if male, or if female to the inpatient treatment unit at NCCIW (in Raleigh, NC) for more intensive supervision and treatment.

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