Shropshire Star Comment: Who wants job in mental health?
Put yourself in the shoes of a person in the mental health field going to work.
Statistically it is not a question of if they are attacked, but when, and how often.
Figures obtained under a Freedom of Information request shows that they are at significant risk of violent attack, day in, day out.
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They are going into a career in which, if a survey by the union Unison is truly representative, they are odds-on to be assaulted, and quite possibly assaulted on a number of occasions during their working life.
Of the four West Midlands mental health trusts, the South Staffordshire and Shropshire Healthcare NHS Trust has seen the biggest number of incidents over the last five years, with just under 10,000 attacks. Across the region, the number of attacks has risen by nearly a quarter.
Who would want a job like that? Yet, like police officers and firefighters, mental health staff are putting public service ahead of personal safety.
These assaults are of course unacceptable and intolerable and every effort must be made to make the working environment as safe as it can be, and to manage the aggressive and violent culprits.
Easy to say, difficult to do.
Often you hear the term in various contexts of "front line staff."
We should always remember what being on the front line can really mean.
