Pubdate: Fri, 02 Aug 2002
Source: Charlotte Observer (NC)
Copyright: 2002 The Charlotte Observer
Contact:  http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/78
Author: Hannah Mitchell, Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)

DETOX CENTER TO CLOSE

HICKORY - Catawba County will close its detoxification center for alcohol 
and drug addicts because of state cutbacks.

The county's Mental Health Services Board decided to end the detoxification 
program Aug. 9 after learning the county Mental Health department is 
expected to have a $1.4 million budget deficit because of state cutbacks.

Fewer people have checked themselves into the southeast Hickory 
detoxification center in the past year, and the service is costly, said 
Mental Health Director John Hardy. The cut will save the department 
$358,000 this fiscal year.

The center will accept its last patients today and will close on Aug. 9. 
The Mental Health department will refer patients to Catawba Valley Medical 
Center for emergency treatment or make them aware of a detoxification 
center in Morganton.

Mental Health officials felt they had no choice but to close the eight-bed 
center, Hardy said. "I think everyone regrets this decision very strongly, 
but we have to maintain financial viability. In our world we're constantly 
juggling one set of people's priorities over another's."

The closing further delays a long-held plan for a combined detoxification 
and outpatient drug treatment center that the county had scheduled to start 
building last fall. The department will now decide how to spend $1.5 
million set aside for the project.

Mental Health had planned to consolidate its detoxification and outpatient 
services, which are in separate locations. Patients are weaned from their 
drug at the detoxification center before starting recovery through the 
outpatient service.

The new center would have offered more room for education and help for 
patients' families. The department now plans to move its outpatient service 
to offices it has in the First Plaza building on Tate Boulevard.

The department took over the detoxification center in 1993 from the Flynn 
Christian Fellowship Homes, which opened it in the 1980s. The center is 
next to Flynn's halfway home for recovering male addicts.

Hardy said he thinks fewer patients have sought out the center recently 
because a methadone recovery clinic opened in Hickory a year ago. Methadone 
is a synthetic narcotic used in the treatment of addiction to heroin and 
other drugs.

The dreary atmosphere at the aged detoxification center may also have 
contributed to the decline, Hardy said.

The nine-bed Morganton detoxification center, which serves Alexander, 
Burke, Caldwell and McDowell counties, will take Catawba County patients if 
enough beds are open, said John Alexander, director of the Foothills Area 
Mental Health service.
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MAP posted-by: Tom