LEWISTON— A New Hampshire woman says her daughter spent more than a week in a St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center emergency room because there was no other place for her when she suffered a mental health crisis.

Maureen Cahill of Northwood, N.H., said her 19-year-old daughter never should’ve been in the ER for that long.

WMTW-TV reported Friday that her daughter had been moved into an in-patient unit after 10 days of waiting. WMTW reported she had been part of a “residential school program” before a Sept. 1 incident at the program. Police took her to St. Mary’s emergency room.

St. Mary’s Hospital in Lewiston declined to say whether she was a patient.

The hospital’s chief medical officer for behavioral health tells WMTW-TV that a portion of the emergency room was built specifically for mental health patients but that it’s not a place for long-term care.

Jeff Austin of the Maine Hospital Association said there’s a “crisis of people needing services.”

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