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Advocate On Taunton Hospital Closing: Trouble Isn't Beds, It's Help Outside Walls


The state announced yesterday that it would be closing Taunton State Hospital and relocating patients and staff to other state-run psychiatric hospitals, including a new state-of-the-art Worcester facility scheduled to open this summer. The Massachusetts Nurses Association decried the move as bad for both staff and patients.

[module align="right" width="half" type="pull-quote"]'The problem is not a lack of hospital beds, the problem is a lack of investment in local community prevention efforts.'[/module]

I asked Deborah Delman, executive director of The Transformation Center and a leading Massachusetts advocate on behalf of people with mental illness, for her reaction. Her reply:

"The state is systematically draining local community-based support for people with mental health conditions and pretending that services driven by medical providers will include mental health. The problem is not a lack of hospital beds, the problem is a lack of investment in local community prevention efforts.

We would support the state in full if it involved us in a locally based plan to:
•Open 6 regional peer-run respite centers which have been shown - using claims data tied to social security numbers - to dramatically reduce hospitalizations and costs while improving services (a single pilot is about to be implemented in Western Massachusetts.)
• Open locally based specialty medical homes focused on mental health recovery services (such as the grant funded pilot at Community Healthlink in Worcester.)

• Be honest about the employment and housing supports that matter to address the fundamental pivot on which mental health rests.
•Submit a state plan amendment to the state Medicaid plan to define peer specialists as a unique provider type such that local mental health services can easily avail themselves of this evidence- based service

We thoroughly support Tony Ricciteli, director, and his recovery-focused leadership at the new Worcester State Hospital facility and expect them to break new ground with their efforts.

However, with the state's drain of local community-based innovation in specific mental health recovery needs — along with the chaos ahead as mental health services are handed off to unprepared and unwitting medical providers in other state initiatives — we see a devastating future for people with mental health needs.

Readers, your comments are welcome below.

This program aired on January 25, 2012. The audio for this program is not available.

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Carey Goldberg Editor, CommonHealth
Carey Goldberg is the editor of WBUR's CommonHealth section.

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