Less than five miles down the road from Brown’s campus sits Bradley Hospital, the state’s only acute-care psychiatric facility for children experiencing mental and behavioral health crises. A recent investigation by Rhode Island’s U.S. District Attorney’s Office found that the state has used the hospital to warehouse children with disabilities, in some cases for years, keeping them segregated from society and away from the long-term care they deserve. Despite the hospital’s resistance to the state’s warehousing, its leaders have failed to raise public awareness of the issue and to pressure the state for change.
Bradley Hospital is affiliated with Brown. In fact, Bradley is the University's only teaching hospital for psychiatric medicine; it is run by Lifespan Health, which will soon take Brown’s name. The University’s close affiliation with Bradley Hospital gives it a unique opportunity—and obligation—to pressure Rhode Island to end its wrongful practice of institutionalization.
In-patient hospitalizations at Bradley are supposed to last for one to two weeks. But for many patients, hospital stays last for much longer because of Rhode Island’s inability to provide better care options. Rachael McDonough, for example, languished at Bradley Hospital for months at a time in a vicious cycle of admission, discharge and readmission that lasted for five years. Instead of living in a supportive environment conducive to a healthy recovery, Rachael was stripped of her independence, kept out of school and segregated from society. In short, she spent formative years of her childhood locked away.
There are hundreds of cases just like Rachael’s. An investigation published in May by the state’s U.S. District Attorney’s Office revealed that the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families, commonly abbreviated as DCYF, admitted more than 500 children to Bradley Hospital from 2017 to 2022. Among those children, the average length of stay was almost two months, when it should have been less than two weeks. Almost half of these children were readmitted to the hospital after being discharged, and more than 100 children were kept there for at least 100 days. Sadly, being institutionalized at Bradley is sometimes the safest healthcare option in the broader context of Rhode Island’s uniquely poor support network for psychiatric care.
DCYF’s inability to provide safe long-term care options for these children means that they cannot be discharged from Bradley Hospital despite the hospital’s efforts to reduce long in-patient stays. Because of this, DCYF bears primary responsibility for this problem. Its mission is to protect the health and safety of children under its care, and it has abjectly failed. Instead of allowing children to remain at Bradley Hospital for years, the department should provide children with appropriate, well-funded and long-term support for their behavioral health challenges.
But Bradley Hospital is not blameless either — both the hospital and its non-profit operator, Lifespan Health, have failed to raise public awareness about institutionalization. This lack of awareness remains the most significant roadblock to securing new leadership and better funding for DCYF, which are imperative for changing this broken system.
Brown can help to enact change. The University’s intimate governance and financial connections with Lifespan Health mean that Brown has unique influence over Lifespan’s operational priorities. The University should use this influence to motivate Lifespan to advocate for change. To start, Brown and Lifespan Health should publicly condemn the state’s practices and call for increased funding and new leadership for DCYF. Anything less than this condemnation would make our University complacent in the state’s malpractice.
Mike Woodilla ’27 can be reached at mike_woodilla@brown.edu. Please send responses to this column to letters@browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
