What Is A Mental Health Emergency: In 2014 The Washington State Supreme Court Ruled The Practice Unlawful

Besides, the situation is straining emergency rooms that have to have the responsibility of housing patients. Concord Hospital’s socalled Yellow Pod, a holding area in the emergency room for psychiatric patients, has security on hand and doors that can lock. Patient can’t be released until a bed opens at New Hampshire Hospital, if an involuntary determination was made in the emergency room. While meaning doctors have deemed them a danger to themselves or others, almost all patients sent to the state hospital are involuntarily committed. As a result, many patients are held there involuntarily and can go days or weeks in hospital holding rooms without any opportunity to challenge the decision in court.

By the way, the list hit a record high last week when 68 people in psychiatric cr sat in emergency rooms statewide waiting for treatment. Advocates say the legal question is only gaining importance as the waitlist to get into the ‘state run’ New Hampshire Hospital steadily rises. In 2014, the Washington state Supreme Court ruled the practice unlawful. Remember, called psychiatric boarding has drawn court challenges in other states. In a highly unusual move, a judge asked the New Hampshire Supreme Court to opine on whether holding patients in emergency rooms for weeks while they wait to be involuntarily committed to the state psychiatric hospital violates the law or patients’ constitutional rights. Whenever leaving it an open question about what happens next, noone appealed the New Hampshire Supreme Court decision. Kelly declined to comment for this story. State law says they should immediately be taken to New Hampshire Hospital or another psychiatric unit approved by the state, when patients been approved for involuntary commitment. This is where it starts getting entertaining, right? In 43 2015 percent involuntary commitment cases, the patient was not transferred immediately to New Hampshire Hospital and akin certified facilities, Kelly wrote. Or weeks, emergency rooms have effectively become psychiatric detention centers, some say, since the wait can be days.

In an one page order issued a month later, the court declined to take it up. Kelly questioned whether that could violate the constitutional right to liberty and due process under the NH and constitutions. In three cases cited in Kelly’s petition, the patients, identified by only their initials, waited in emergency departments for 14 or 15 days before getting to New Hampshire Hospital. Also, the earliest that one of them saw a judge was 17 days after being approved for involuntary emergency commitment. Whenever arguing he didn’t have standing, the attorney general’s office requested the state Supreme Court decline to take up Kelly’s socalled interlocutory transfer statement.

Ann Miller

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