Mental health hospitals scrutinized in Calif., Mass.

The Los Angeles Times looks at former consultant who helped overhaul California's psychiatric hospitals. In Massachusetts, the future of Taunton State Hospital -- one of two remaining publicly run mental health hospitals there -- is uncertain.

Los Angeles Times: Ex-Consultant To California Mental Hospitals Criticized Elsewhere
A consultant who led the troubled effort to overhaul California's public psychiatric hospitals has played a lead role in federal reforms in at least five other states, where critics have raised similar concerns about cronyism and the quality of his work. Nirbhay Singh, a psychologist from Virginia, abruptly resigned from his California post last year after The Times asked state officials about rising violence in the hospitals and the state's hiring of Singh's family members (Romney and Hoeffel, 6/17).

Boston Globe: State Mental Hospital In Taunton Has Uncertain Future
As residents this year debated a proposal to build a $500 million casino resort at an industrial park here, the future of another massive property six miles north seemed a near certainty: the 154-acre site of Taunton State Hospital, one of the state's two remaining publicly run hospitals exclusively for the mentally ill, was marked for closure by the governor in January. The Patrick administration's closure, planned for the end of the year, would empty 18 historic buildings in this cash-strapped city (Wen, 6/17).

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This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.