A recent report detailing long waits for psychiatric care in emergency rooms and crisis centers across North Carolina is scary but no surprise. The Observer reported on overcrowded facilities earlier this year in light of this tragedy: Kenny Chapman, who in March told Carolinas Medical Center-Randolph staffers he wanted to kill his wife, ended up killing her and two of his children hours later after being sent home with medication.

The deaths spotlighted the soaring demand on Mecklenburg County's mental health system, which had led to perpetual overcrowding at CMC-Randolph, the county's 66-bed hospital. Mental health advocates say such conditions statewide have resulted in too many dangerous patients being sent home instead of getting beds and hospital care. That situation can have and has had tragic consequences.

The report last week by the Wake County chapter of the National Alliance of Mental Health Illness shows counties share this problem with Mecklenburg. People with mental illneses are languishing in the state's hospital emergency rooms for days, unable to get treatment.

The average wait time for psychiatric patients across the state was 2.6 days, the report said. About a quarter of the patients put on a waiting list for a state mental hospital during the first six months of this year checked out before being admitted.

Mecklenburg's problem has been exacerbated by a state legislature that has underfunded this community's mental health needs for years. Mecklenburg ranks 23rd out of North Carolina's 24 regional mental health agencies in state aid.

But as this report notes, statewide there have never been enough beds to meet the swelling need for treatment. A 2001 reform effort that cut the number of state psychiatric beds in order to treat more patients privately failed miserably. The state's mental health budget has been slashed during this recession, further reducing beds and making matters worse.

Department of Health and Human Services secretary Lanier Cansler has acknowledged the problem: "We are making progress but the progress is restrained by the limited availability of funding, particularly in these difficult economic times."

But state lawmakers can do better, and they must. More money will help but so can creative ideas such as those offered in this report.

In any case, the situation today is putting all of us in jeopardy. Without timely, adequate treatment, people in need of psychiatric care are ticking time-bombs. When they explode, as Kenny Chapman did, it can be horrifying.