Letters: Closing Greylock Pavilion Fails Patients

The following is a letter submitted to Tim Jones, CEO and president of Northern Berkshire Healthcare, by representatives of the local Massachusetts Nurses Association.

On behalf of the registered nurses of North Adams Regional Hospital, with the full support of our union and professional association, the Massachusetts Nurses Association/National Nurses United, we are writing to express our strong opposition to the planned closing of the Greylock Pavilion. We believe this closing represents an abrogation of this institution's mission of providing comprehensive services to all members of our community and a failure to provide state-mandated care parity for those suffering with acute mental illness and substance abuse issues.

As stated on our hospital web site, "North Adams Regional Hospital offers complete inpatient psychiatric services at Greylock Pavilion. Greylock Pavilion is now known throughout Western Massachusetts for its effective treatment programs, offering secure high quality inpatient hospitalization for the adult in need of acute, short-term psychiatric treatment. We provide a safe, therapeutic milieu, encouraging patient and family involvement. Our philosophy is based on the patient's total needs - both physical and emotional."

The nurses of NARH are proud of this program and what it offers to the most vulnerable in our community, and we are appalled that our administration is now proposing to abolish this program and to go back on the commitment to meet our patients "total needs – both physical and emotional." We are concerned that this decision is being made in the midst of a growing shortage of psychiatric beds and services throughout the commonwealth, and Western Massachusetts in particular. The loss of this program will no doubt result in psychiatric patients languishing for hours, if not several days, waiting for appropriate care and treatment in our and other facility's emergency department, while other patients will go without treatment altogether, leaving them to suffer on our streets, in our homeless shelters or, as is the case throughout the state, in our corrections system.

MNA Chairman Ruth O'Hearn, registered nurse
North Adams Regional Hospital MNA Committee

North Adams Man Charged in Stabbing Father to Death

By Tammy Daniels iBerkshires Staff
12:46PM / Tuesday, May 12, 2026

Berkshire District Attorney Timothy Shugrue describes the murder as a tragedy, saying the lack of mental health care is leading to 'awful situations.'

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Police walked into a "brutal scene" Monday — 67-year-old David Allen Boucher had been stabbed multiple times and left for dead the week before. 

 

His son, David Louis Boucher, 48, had walked into the police station at 11:49 a.m. and told police he had killed his father. 

 

"The victim had been stabbed multiple times, with different objects, sharp objects," said Berkshire District Attorney Timothy Shugrue after Boucher's arraignment for murder on Tuesday morning. "Multiple wounds. Struggle in the bedroom, struggle in the kitchen. The decedent struggled and fought hard. It was a brutal scene."

 

The attack is believed to have happened on Tuesday, May 5, based on initial evidence including the state of the body and statements made by the defendant, according to the DA's Office.

 

Boucher had not-guilty pleas entered on his behalf and he is being held without bail at the prosecution's request. He is being held at the Berkshire County House of Correction and is scheduled to appear again in Northern Berkshire District Court on June 12.

 

Shugrue said it was unclear why Boucher waited a week to inform police but noted the investigation is barely 24 hours old. 

 

The younger Boucher lived downstairs and his father upstairs in the multi-unit family home on Walnut Street.