VA Unit to Reopen; Probe of 5 Suicides Continues

A psychiatric unit at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Long Beach--shut down in May after five patient suicides--is scheduled to reopen Monday as a federal investigation into the deaths continues.

The number of beds has been cut from 28 to 10, the nursing staff has been newly trained and new supervisors have been assigned to the locked ward, where the most unstable psychiatric patients are held. The ward was shut down in May after a 27-year-old Marine hanged himself in a bathroom.

It was the fifth patient suicide in 13 months; two others hanged themselves, one jumped from a hospital roof and a fifth shot himself shortly after he was allegedly granted an early release, according to records and staff members.