Adithya Sambamurthy, The Bay Citizen

Napa State Hospital is plagued by violent assaults on staff

Hundreds of health care workers rallied outside the gates of Napa State Hospital Wednesday to demand new safety-measures at the government-run mental hospital, which has seen a seven-fold increase in violent attacks in recent years.

“We don’t have enough police power to protect the patients as well as the staff who treat them,” said Dr. Richard Frishman, a psychiatrist who was knocked unconscious by a patient in the admissions unit in 2008 in a phone interview.

Last month, The Bay Citizen reported that over the past two years there were 224 instances of injuries inflicted by patient assaults that caused Napa hospital staff members to miss at least one day of work.

Last year, 1,580 crimes — including 1,275 batteries and 103 felonies — were reported at the hospital, according to the police officers’ union and the hospital administration. The vast majority of those cases never led to prosecution.

In October, Donna Gross, a psychiatric technician, was slain on the hospital grounds. She was allegedly strangled by a patient, Jess Willard Massey, who is now facing charges in connection with the death.

“The Department of Mental Health needs to look very carefully at their priorities since things are getting worse and worse,” Frishman said.

Wednesday’s rally is the latest in a series of actions organized by a coalition of labor unions who represent workers at the facility, including the American Federation of State County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME) local 2620, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 1000, the California Association of Psychiatric Technicians (CAPT), and  the Union of America Physicians & Dentists (UAPD).

Jennifer Turner, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Mental Health, which runs the hospital, said the agency is sensitive to the union’s concerns.

The agency, she said, “continues to work with union representatives and state hospital employees on the development of enhanced safety and security measures and is making every effort to implement those measures quickly and efficiently.”

“Napa State Hospital is currently in the process of training staff on new policies that have been developed, which include revised grounds access, a grounds presence team, and an implementation and monitoring team, and will implement those measures once staff are prepared,” she said.

Implementing such programs could prove difficult, given California’s massive $26 billion budget deficit.

Last week, Gov. Jerry Brown proposed re-appropriating $98 million in funds from Proposition 63, the voter-approved mental health fund, to pay for special education programs for school children.

But Frishman said that shouldn’t be a barrier to safety on the hospital grounds.

“If a bridge collapsed everyone would see that it was an emergency and get it fixed immediately,” he said.

The problem, he said is that “the people that work in mental health are taking care of a portion of the population that the public does not usually see.”