From the Concord Monitor:
"The federal Department of Justice has joined a class-action lawsuit that accuses the state of cutting community mental health services and instead needlessly institutionalizing people at the state hospital and at a home for the elderly.
The lawsuit was brought in federal court in February by the Disabilities Rights Center against Gov. John Lynch and state Health and Human Services officials. It alleges the state has repeatedly violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by exiling the mentally ill rather than treating them in their own communities.
In announcing the decision to join the case, John Kacavas, U.S. attorney for the District of New Hampshire, said the state responds to people in mental crisis by forcing them to spend days at local emergency rooms until they can be brought to the state hospital, sometimes by the police."
Planet of the Blind 