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CONCORD, NH – One woman told lawmakers that her son’s toenails grew so long while he was at the state prison’s Secure Psychiatric Unit that they curled under his feet and dug into his skin.
Another woman, Shelly Raza, spoke about her grown son, Corey Peterson, being violently “taken down” to the ground for touching a corrections officer. Corey pulled out all of his fingernails and toenails while at the unit, and Raza still doesn’t know how he could have done that.
Neither mentally ill patient had committed a crime, but both were held at SPU because they were considered too dangerous to themselves or others to be housed at the New Hampshire Hospital, the state’s main psychiatric facility.
“(Corey) recently spent 23 months in isolation in the Secure Psychiatric Unit,” Raza said. “He never committed a crime.”
The mothers were among a standing-room only crowd at the Legislative Office Building at a subcommittee meeting on Wednesday. The subcommittee voted to not recommend legislation, House Bill 1541, that would prohibit imprisoning mentally ill people at SPU who hadn’t committed a crime.
Only after the vote did the subcommittee let members of the packed audience share their stories about loved ones at SPU.
Rep. Ken Snow, D-Manchester, who opposed the legislation Rep. Renny Cushing, D-Hampton, submitted during the last session as being too narrow, said as a work session, the subcommittee didn’t have to take public comments at all.
The subcommittee will report back to the House Health, Human Services, and Elderly Affairs Committee.
A federal civil rights complaint has been filed seeking an investigation into the practice of commingling non-criminal patients with mentally ill patients at SPU who have committed serious crimes such as murder, rape, assault and robbery.
It’s been all about the money it would take to fix the problem for more than a decade, Cushing said.
“I think the failure is not with the people in the Department of Corrections,” Cushing said. “I don’t think it’s with the Department of Health and Human Services. The failure and the reason this condition exists is because of the Legislature,” Cushing said.
A patient with any other disease that was a bit challenging wouldn’t be taken to an unaccredited hospital, Cushing said.
“It is untenable for the state of New Hampshire to take people with mental illness who are a bit of challenge and put them away inside an incarcerated setting and wish for the best,” Cushing said. “The responsibility rests with us.”
Rep. Snow acknowledged that commingling patients wasn’t ideal, but said only five to 10 non-criminal patients at any given time are held at the prison unit.
Snow said, however, there is a bigger problem because anywhere from 30 to 60 mentally ill people on a given day are being “illegally, unethically warehoused” in hospital emergency rooms because there are not enough beds available at New Hampshire Hospital.
Snow praised the staff and treatment at the Secure Psychiatric Unit, which is run by the Department of Corrections, comparing it favorably to the New Hampshire Hospital, which is under the Department of Health and Human Services.
Paula Mattis, director of Medical and Forensic Services at the Department of Corrections, spoke near the end of the session encouraging family members to make sure they tell officials about their concerns. Snow had high praise as well for Mattis.
“I’m not suggesting we ignore this legislation. All I’m saying is the problem is much broader than this. Let’s look at the entire problem.”
Snow recommended a study commission be set up to look at the big picture, at all of the problems in the state’s mental health system.
There’s much more to this story. Click here to read it in full on InDepthNH.org
About InDepthNH: Nancy West founded the nonprofit New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism in April. West is the executive editor of the center’s investigative news website,InDepthNH.org. West has won many awards for investigative reporting during her 30 years at the New Hampshire Union Leader. She has taught investigative journalism at the New England Center for Investigative Reporting’s summer program for pre-college students at Boston University. West is passionate about government transparency. The New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism is a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News, formerly called Investigative News Network, which is also InDepthNH.org’s fiscal sponsor. Click here to read about INN to learn more about the mission of nonprofit news.
