Part 1:Mental-health changes in North Carolina were intended to improve community treatment and give taxpayers good value, but they have done neither. Providers took clients shopping, swimming and to movies for $61 an hour. And the cost of the community support program was more than 10 times what the state expected.

Part 2:Community support is lucrative for providers, but reviews say many clients don't need the mental-health service. Now the state wants its money back.

Part 3:North Carolina's 2001 mental-health reforms aimed to make its mental hospitals places of last resort and to have as many people as possible seek treatment near their homes. But now people with severe needs are left without care.

Part 4:Charges are filed in just 13 percent of cases. The lowest-paid, least-trained workers spend the most time with patients.

Part 5:Since December 2000, at least 82 patients in the state's mental institutions have died in ways that raise questions, including homicides and suicides.

Q:In 2001, state legislators and Gov. Mike Easley's administration set out to reform the public mental health system with a sledgehammer.

A new state law will give the public a glimpse behind the curtain at state psychiatric hospitals and other mental health facilities when a patient dies.

The State Bureau of Investigation has been asked to review allegations that employees at a state mental hospital in Butner used a cell phone to take nude photos of at least one patient.

A prosecutor says there is not enough evidence to file criminal charges in the case of an inmate who suffered devastating injuries while in solitary confinement last year at a state prison in Taylorsville.

The state's chief medical examiner has determined a patient who died at a state mental hospital in Goldsboro on Oct. 27 most likely expired of natural causes.

A worker from Caswell Developmental Center in Kinston was convicted this week of abusing a resident at the state-run home for people with severe disabilities.

Three male employees at Dorothea Dix Hospital lost their jobs Thursday as the SBI was asked to look into allegations they had sex with female prisoners working at the state mental hospital.