A troubling report out of one state warns that budget cuts to state-funded mental facilities have forced them to reduce staff and as a result, put patients and the workers who remain in great danger. The Tampa Bay Times and Sarasota Herald-Tribune spent months investigating Florida state-run mental hospitals and found poor conditions and short-staffed facilities that put patients and workers at risk.

Florida has seen $100 million in budget cuts to their state-funded mental hospitals and in the past six years their largest hospitals have seen the amount of violent attacks double. Not only are patients injuring themselves or other patients but they are harming staff too. Some employees are left alone to watch maybe 15-20 patients and if a patient attacks, the closest person to call for help may be several floors away. Sometimes there are not enough staff members to watch all the patients and those with violent tendencies can wander the facility by themselves and hurt themselves or someone else.

Florida’s Department of Children and Families (DCF) operates many mental hospitals in the state and issued warnings to staff when they recognized that violent attacks against workers were on the rise. After those warnings, the budget was cut by $61 million between 2011 and 2013. The state had already cut $35 million from the budget a few years earlier along with about a third of the mental health staff. Services for patients that kept them active and engaged like counseling sessions, trainings or other activities were also cut. Patient needs may be neglected as there just are not enough staff members to be able to adequately serve them.

The state estimates that 60 percent of patients are “forensic” patients who were charged with a crime but were not mentally fit to go to trial, so they go to the hospitals for treatment until they are deemed fit to stand trial. The other 40 percent of their patients are “civil commitments”, so they are not there because they were charged with a crime but they are considered dangerous to either themselves or society. Many of these patients are unstable and may not be able to control their own actions, which is why it is important to have ample and well-trained staff that can remain vigilant and make sure that if these patients do start to become violent, they can be safely helped before someone gets hurt.

Washington is another state whose psychiatric hospitals have experienced budget cuts and staff reductions and have seen violent attacks within their walls increase. Mental health treatment is not a one-time treatment. It requires long-term therapy and budget cuts can make the proper care difficult to maintain. When patients do not get the care they need, they do not get better, and that leaves the people who work and live with them vulnerable to their symptoms. Along with budget cuts, the amount of psychiatrists is headed towards an overall reduction as well. A majority of these kinds of doctors are close to retiring and the amount of new doctors choosing psychiatry as their specialty may not be enough to replace those who leave the profession, which could leave an already underserved population with even fewer resources.

Part of the agreement between an employer and an employee is that the employer should maintain a safe work environment. From these reports, it does not look like the staff in many mental health facilities can go to work feeling safe. Hopefully these investigative reports spur this state and others who are reducing funding to act before even more people get hurt.