New Peer-Run Mental Health Program Aims to Reduce ‘Vicious Cycle’ of Recurring Hospitalizations

Over the summer, Greg Burdwood, executive director of Connections Peer Support, has been repairing this Northwood barn, which will house a new three-bed mental health program, called Step Up Step Down. (Alli Fam/NHPR)

Leon Amaya normally gets up early to plan. Over the summer, he usually wrote in his journal in a restored mill in Nashua. The space is part of Step Up, Step Down, a new program for people in a mental health crisis.

The program has three furnished bedrooms, brightly colored walls and communal couches. But it feels more like an apartment than a sterile, cold facility.

Amaya came to the program at the end of May, after he left a psychiatric unit in Brattleboro, Vermont. It wasn’t the first time he’d been hospitalized.

“I kept going in and out of psychiatric units over and over and over, and my life almost came to an end a few times,” Amaya said. “This place has really opened my mind and I’m the healthiest I’ve been, both physically and mentally in a long long time.”

The state has pledged up to $100 million dollars to alleviate a mental crisis that routinely leaves dozens of people in hospital emergency rooms awaiting psychiatric care. But building the infrastructure takes time and persistence. Step Up, Step Down became part of the state’s mental health plan in 2019 and just is launching now.

Click here for the full story from New Hampshire Public Radio.