(May 23, 2016) The Treatment Advocacy Center is leading the charge against the bizarre and inhumane practice of imprisoning civilly committed psychiatric patients who haven’t committed a crime in New Hampshire (“Lawsuit likely in NH’s imprisoning of non-criminal mentally ill patients,” InDepthNH, May 17).

New Hampshire is sending some of its most vulnerable citizens – individuals with severe mental illness who have been court-ordered to receive treatment in a psychiatric hospital – to the Secure Psychiatric Unit (SPU) at the state prison for men. Yes, women, too.

It’s atrocious, but it’s legal.

New Hampshire law allows civilly committed patients who haven’t committed or been convicted of a crime, but are a danger to themselves or others, to be housed at the SPU, said Jeff Lyons, spokesman for the Department of Corrections, in an interview with InDepthNH.

“They are placed in the Secure Psychiatric Unit because they exhibit more violent tendencies than the other patients at the New Hampshire Hospital,” Lyons said. “Until such time as there is another option in New Hampshire, this is where they will be housed.”

But Frankie Berger, director of advocacy at the Treatment Advocacy Center, argues the practice violates patients’ civil rights and must stop immediately.

“We had no idea this type of thing was happening,” Berger told InDepthNH. “Honestly, it’s appalling and shocking what we’ve learned so far. We are going to do everything we can to stop this.”

The SPU population includes psychiatric patients who haven’t committed a crime, those who have been deemed incompetent to stand trial, those found not guilty by reason of insanity and mentally ill patients who have committed serious crimes such as murder and rape. The state’s most dangerous sex offenders are also housed there.

State Rep. Renny Cushing proposed legislation this year that would require alternative housing besides prison for mentally ill patients who are considered dangerous but who haven’t committed a crime.

“It’s long past time that the state of New Hampshire stop taking people who have never been charged with or convicted of a crime and sending them to prison. We should be sending them to hospitals, not prison,” Cushing said.

Civil rights lawsuits arising from the national psychiatric bed shortage have been filed across the country. But what’s going on in New Hampshire may be the most medieval example of the criminalization of mental illness of them all.

People with severe mental illness and their families – in New Hampshire and across the country – deserve better than this; they need #aBedInstead.

Visit #aBedInstead to learn more about the Treatment Advocacy Center’s campaign to end this injustice and ensure access to inpatient treatment for people with severe mental illness.

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