A63-year-old woman with a history of mental health issues jumped to her death on July 27 a building on Main Street in Nashua.

It happened in broad daylight, which is more than can be said for the state’s response to inquiries about how it came to be that the woman was no longer a patient at New Hampshire Hospital.

As reported by Nancy West on the nonprofit news website InDepthNH.org, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services said state and federal confidentiality laws prohibit them from disclosing details of what happened. It is unclear, for instance, when the woman left the hospital in Concord and under what circumstances.

How convenient for those who might be held accountable that the state’s all-
encompassing veil of secrecy includes the state-run psychiatric hospital, even in circumstances like this.

And how inconvenient for the public, which is expected to keep ponying up the money to run the hospital but is not entitled to answers following this tragic situation.

We don’t know the particulars, but it feels eerily similar to those cases in which the Division for Children, Youth and Families and the family court system manage to avoid public scrutiny after children died while under their supervision.

It’s understandable that the woman’s interactions with the hospital would be private while she was alive, but that lack of transparency, sadly, doesn’t do her any good now, and it could do others harm.

Disclosing the circumstances that led to her leaving the hospital and an examination of the care and treatment she received while she was there might help patients in the future.

For that matter, it might help some of the patients who are being treated at the state hospital now.

It’s no secret that the state’s mental-health system is in shambles. The U.S. Department of Justice and state mental health advocates sued the state over its failure to provide adequate care, and while the state settled the suit, it has – by its own admission – failed to hold up certain aspects of its end of the bargain.

The state hospital is, by most accounts, in a state of turmoil after about a dozen psychiatrists quit when the state entered into an agreement to have Dartmouth-Hitchcock provide staffing at the facility on a short-term basis. The psychiatrists said Dartmouth-Hitchcock refused to negotiate in good faith.

The medical center has reportedly moved some of its staff from its headquarters in Lebanon to cover the state hospital in Concord, though it’s not clear how many.

DHHS spokesman Jake Leon told InDepthNH that, "New Hampshire Hospital closely monitors its staffing levels to ensure that the individual treatment needs for all New Hampshire Hospital patients are met."

No disrespect to Leon, but of course he’s going to say that.

The evidence, though, including a lack of real transparency, suggests New Hampshire is still taking a bubble-gum-and-bailing-wire approach to mental-health care.