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Many mentally ill in nursing homes

The Lawton Constitution - 12/30/2016

BATON ROUGE - A federal investigation has found that Louisiana unnecessarily isolates and segregates thousands of mentally ill people in costly nursing facilities instead of providing them with community-based services.

In a 30-page letter to Gov. John Bel Edwards last week, the Justice Department says its civil rights division concluded the state violates the Americans with Disabilities Act by relying on nursing facilities to house approximately 4,000 people with serious mental illness.

The department, which opened its investigation in 2014, says many mentally ill residents confined in nursing facilities can and want to live in their own communities.