ATLANTA (AP) -- The director of the mental health program at The Carter Center says Georgia is making progress on addressing the treatment needs of drug addicts and the mentally ill.
Thomas Bornemann on Friday presented the program's preliminary recommendations for improving the state's behavioral health care system. He says Georgia is in the process of transforming the system into one that emphasizes early treatment and ongoing recovery efforts in the community and is less dependent on institutional care.
In 2010, Georgia reached a settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice outlining specific required services and benchmarks to provide community services targeting 9,000 adults with "serious and persistent mental illness" that must be fully implemented by July 2015.
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