Over the past several weeks, big changes have occurred in the state's mental health system. Patsy Christian, director of the soon-to-be-opened hospital at Butner, stepped down. The medical director at another state psychiatric hospital resigned.

Meanwhile, workers from Dorothea Dix have drawn the legislature's long-overdue attention. And the governor has -- finally -- requested more money to fix the state's disastrous "reforms."

There are, in short, signs that the state is starting to respond to the crisis in mental health.

If only the change were so apparent at the patient level.

That's where Phil Wiggins resides.

Wiggins was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teenager. He is now 64.

He lived nearly 44 years in one of the state's psychiatric hospitals.

Now he lives in a group home in Zebulon.

Wiggins has experienced a dramatic turnaround since he was released from his safe but stifling cocoon at Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro. With intensive community support services -- the help of a full-time worker assisting him one-on-one with basic social skills -- Wiggins became a person more in tune with the world. His sense of humor shone through. He learned to send e-mail. He read magazines and this newspaper.

Then, in its wisdom, the state decided Wiggins didn't need or deserve that much care after all. The state cut his hours again and again.

Last month, his sister, Louise Jordan of Raleigh, appealed. And here is the verdict:

The state will keep paying for a bare minimum of one-on-one care until the end of July. Then, as of Aug. 1, all of Wiggins' community support services will be canceled.

Kaput. Done.

This, for a man whose behavior, according to his psychiatrist, rises and falls with the attentiveness and quality of his care.

As his hours of one-on-one care have dropped, his erratic behavior has increased. He is more combative in his communications. He is tormented by nightmares. He has reverted to old compulsions to hoard dangerous materials and mix chemicals.

His sister recently spent hundreds of dollars to reimburse another group home resident whose cosmetics Wiggins got into, dumped out and mixed into a sweet-smelling experiment.

In a letter that accompanied Wiggins' appeal, the psychiatrist wrote: "I urge you to please reconsider increasing his hours. Not only would it be a high cost to the state if he had to be re-institutionalized, but it would be Mr. Wiggins, himself, who would pay the greatest price. It would be a tragedy to see him live out the remainder of his life within hospital walls."

Last week, Jordan took her brother in for a checkup. The psychiatrist immediately noted the change in Wiggins in just the short time since the appeal.

Wiggins is thinner, more withdrawn. He is visibly tortured by the increasingly angry voices in his head.

"You need to do something for him!" the psychiatrist told Jordan in alarm.

As if his fate were in his sister's hands.

Jordan is in fact doing all she can.

The system, perhaps on its way to improvement, is working against her every step of the way.