DATE: Friday, September 5, 1997             TAG: 9709050627

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B7   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: RICHMOND                          LENGTH:   77 lines

MENTAL HEALTH COMMISSIONER RESIGNS AFTER HARSH CRITICISM TIMOTHY KELLY SAYS HIS DECISION TO QUIT WAS UNRELATED TO THE SCATHING U.S. REPORT.

State mental health commissioner Timothy A. Kelly has resigned, two months after the U.S. Justice Department issued a scathing report about patient abuse and deaths at a state-run psychiatric hospital.

However, Kelly said Thursday his decision to leave, effective Sept. 17, was unrelated to the Justice Department report.

``A wonderful opportunity has come up for me to join the national gambling impact study commission,'' Kelly said. ``I wish I could stay through the end of the term (of Gov. George Allen), but to get this job I've got to go now.''

Greg Crist, a spokesman for Allen, said an acting commissioner will be appointed soon to serve the final four months of Allen's administration.

Valerie L. Marsh, head of a private advocacy group for the mentally disabled and their families that for years has urged broad system reform, said she looked forward to new leadership.

``My hope is that this change in leadership at this late point in the Allen administration symbolizes the administration's desire to work with the Hall-Gartlan Commission in fixing our broken mental health system,'' said Marsh, executive director of the Virginia Alliance for the Mentally Ill.

The legislative commission will recommend changes in the system later this year.

The Justice Department focused its investigation on patient care at Central State Hospital near Petersburg after the June 1996 death of patient Gloria Huntley. It also investigated Eastern State Hospital, Northern Virginia Mental Health Institute and Northern Virginia Training Center.

Kelly said last week that settlement agreements had been reached in each probe.

Mental health advocates also want an investigation of a July 11 patient suicide at Western State Hospital.

But the spotlight had been on Central State, which, the Justice Department said, failed to protect the rights of patients, subjecting them to abuse, inadequate care and even death.

The agency said on June 30 that Central State patients ``are at serious risk of harm and have suffered harm, in violation of their basic rights.''

It also charged that the hospital provided inadequate psychiatric care, improperly used medications and improperly placed patients in restraints and seclusion and concluded that a shortage of well-trained doctors, nurses and aides was largely to blame.

Kelly said the hospital was taking a number of steps to improve patient treatment, including hiring of new psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses and other professionals for the Forensic Unit. He said training would be provided to staff in human rights and managing aggressive patient behavior.

Huntley spent 300 hours in isolation bound to a bed in the final month of her life, despite warnings from her doctor one year earlier that restraints could kill her because she suffered asthma and epilepsy.

Dr. Dimitrios Theodoridis accused staff members of using restraints to punish Huntley and threatened to charge them with patient abuse. Another patient, Derrick Wilson, died in restraints at Central State in 1993.

The Justice Department report blamed Huntley's death on the punitive use of restraints.

Justice Department investigators also discovered that other Central State patients spent long hours restrained and isolated. One patient was in seclusion and restraints for 1,727 hours over an eight-month period, the report said. Another spent 720 hours in restraints or seclusion during four months, and another was secluded or restrained for 668 hours in three months.

Central State also did not measure up to generally accepted standards of psychiatric treatment, the report said.

Psychiatric evaluations of patients were typically superficial, follow-ups were often inadequate and there was too much reliance on restraints, the report said.

The hospital also often misdiagnosed patients' mental illnesses, subjecting them to needless or improper medications and the wrong treatments, the report said. Little or no effort was made to learn the medical history of patients, including which medicines make them ill or have been ineffective, it said.

Kelly, a clinical psychologist, will join the U.S. Gaming Commission headed by Kay Cole James, the former secretary of health and human services in Virginia who hired Kelly for the commissioner's job.

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