Today we had a speaker from a mental health hospital. When asked about safety situations she said that she has never been in a dangerous or scary situation. This surprised me a lot. I think a lot of people (including myself) think of mental hospitals as scary places full of "crazy" people who will hurt you. I got the impression that she too felt this way after she accepted the job. She said that she called her mom and told her that she didn't know if she was going to be able to work there. She then went out and bought lip stick pepper spray, a push whistle and a clothing alarm. Not once has she ever had to use any of those devices. I found an article on violence against staff members in psychiatric facilities. According to the article, "75% of 999 psychiatric nursing staff reported that they had been assaulted at least once in their career." Nurses are probably more likely to be threatened or attacked than the OT department because they have more contact with the patients. Still, I think that number is incredibly high. This statstic was from 2000. According to an artticle from 2003, "the majority of psychiatrists are involved in the management and treatment of violent behaviour, and 50% report having been assaulted by a patient at least once" (World of Psychiatry Association). I was unable to get specific stats. for OT's and OTA's. If you double click on my title you will find a very interesting article that claims that violence is on the rise in mental hospitals. The article is from Dec. 2010. The main point that the speaker made was that you need to constantly be aware of what is going on around you.
http://www.dangerousbehaviour.com/Disturbing_News/violence%20and%20mental%20health.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1525086/
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