ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia’s mental health system is in trouble again with federal authorities, who say seven state psychiatric centers remain unsafe and the state must do more to move the mentally ill into outpatient care.

The U.S. Department of Justice has slapped Georgia with a federal discrimination lawsuit accusing the state of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by improperly segregating hundreds of Georgians with mental illness and developmental disabilities in institutions. The department’s civil rights division also filed a motion seeking the appointment of a federal monitor to protect patients “from harm to their lives, health and safety.”

Federal prosecutors listed several violent incidents — a killing, a rape and several suicides — at state mental hospitals in 2009 and 2010. They said patients confined in Georgia’s mental hospitals are still exposed to “egregious harm.”

The state’s new mental health chief disputed that, arguing the state has made huge strides in improving care at its psychiatric facilities.

“The people we serve are safer (and) are getting better care,” state Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities Commissioner Dr. Frank Shelp said Friday.

Georgia has set up a new department to supervise behavioral health care in Georgia. Gov. Sonny Perdue is also proposing an additional $70 million in funding for mental health over the next two fiscal years, the only state agency to see its funding rise during Georgia’s budget crunch.

Additionally, the state said it would stop offering care for adult mental health patients at Central State Hospital in Milledgeville, where some of the worst cases of abuse had been reported. In November, federal officials found so many shortcomings at Central State, with patients attacking one another and receiving poor treatment, that state officials announced the facility would no longer accept new patients.

Perdue spokesman Bert Brantley said Friday the Obama administration has suddenly “changed the rules of the game” by now requiring the state expand outpatient community services.

“They have been saying fix the hospitals, fix the hospitals, so that’s what we’ve been doing,” Brantley said. “We’re making progress to the goal line here but they keep changing where the goal is.”

Brantley said even before the new Justice Department filing, the state had asked for a status conference with the federal judge overseeing the case to offer a report on improvements in the system. No date has been set yet.

Among the allegations by federal prosecutors:

— In 2009, the state failed to properly supervise someone who had previously killed. That individual assaulted and killed another individual in the hospital.

— In 2008, hospital staff failed to intervene in a fight. One person involved in the fight was knocked unconscious and died a few days later from blunt force trauma to the head.

— In 2009, staff failed to supervise an individual who went on to rape someone.

— In 2009, an individual committed suicide by tipping his bed up and hanging himself from it. Justice Department experts have repeatedly warned hospital staff that these beds should be bolted to the floor.

— Just this month the state failed to adequately supervise an individual who expressed suicidal thoughts. The next day she committed suicide.

The seven hospitals are: East Central Regional Hospital, Georgia Regional Hospitals at Savannah and Atlanta, Southwestern State Hospital, Central State Hospital, West Central Georgia Regional Hospital and Northwest Georgia Hospital.