Your job shouldn't kill you

By DENYCE DUNCAN LACY

When 32-year-old Kendra Webdale was shoved off a subway platform to her death on January 3rd, she became the fourth native of western New York in less than two years who police say was killed by a former psychiatric center patient.

Webdale's murder caused headlines (newsclip at left), not only because of its gruesome nature, but also because her killer was a stranger.

Editorials in the New York Times, the Daily News and New York Post, among others, blamed reinstitutionalization for the murder of an innocent victim.

But the reality is that those at greatest risk of harm from people who don't get proper care for their mental illness are the people who are closest to them. The three earlier victims all knew and cared for their alleged killers.

Usual targets: workers, family
GRIM DUTY-Workers from the Erie County medical examiners office
remove the body of PEF member Judith Scanlon from the murder scene.

Two days before Thanksgiving, Judi Scanlon, a PEF nurse and intensive case manager, was bludgeoned to death during a home visit to one of her patients.

Scanlon had a reputation as a warm and caring worker, who even opened her home to clients on holidays.

While officials are still investigating her murder, Scanlon's patient, Diane Wylie, has been indicted for the killing.
Last August, a Buffalo man who had spent eight years in a psychiatric center after killing his son, stabbed and beat his wife to death.

Authorities say Salvatore Garrasi stopped taking the medication he'd been prescribed as an outpatient.
And in April of 1997, Anthony Bester of Buffalo stabbed and shot his father, a day after he punched the father in the face. Police say the elder Bester had refused to have his son arrested.

"These murders have placed in sharp focus the pitfalls of downsizing New York's psychiatric centers through fast-track discharge policies aimed at emptying and ultimately closing the facilities in favor of outpatient community services," said PEF President Roger Benson.

"They have also exposed the inadequacy of the current mental-health system to deal with patients who stop taking their medication, or don't take it properly, once they are released from psychiatric hospitals.

"It's time to stop pushing patients out the doors of psychiatric centers before they or the community are ready for them."

Hazardous duty

While Scanlon paid the ultimate price in caring for her patients, Benson and other union leaders note that employees of the state Office of Mental Health face on-the-job violence on a nearly daily basis, inside and outside state psychiatric facilities.

"The job of working with the mentally ill has definitely become more dangerous," said Region 12 Coordinator Ruth Gaines, who has been an intensive case manager (ICM) since 1989.

"One of my clients pulled a knife on me during a home visit a few years ago. Luckily, I had recently received safety training, and was able to talk him into putting the knife down.

"But afterwards, emotionally I was a wreck. I realized I could have been killed in there." Gaines and other PEF mental-health-care professionals say slowing the pace of hospital discharges and increasing the staff assigned to work with the increasingly violent clientele will go a long way toward reducing the danger.

"Fast tracking the discharge of psychiatric-center clients increases the caseload of the ICMs and other staff, which in turn increases the risks those workers face," said Region 11 Coordinator Pat Baker, a discharge coordinator at Kingsboro Psychiatric Center in Brooklyn.

Violence inside state psych centers

And recent incidents at two state psychiatric facilities also highlights the dangers of working with mentally ill patients.

In late September a patient at Hutchings Psychiatric Center, who killed a mental-health counselor in 1981, slapped a nurse and punched a therapy aide who tried to subdue him.

During the attack another patient attacked another therapy aide, kicking her in the pelvis.

The incident prompted some 30 employees to sign a petition demanding improved security at the facility.

On December 2 police were called to help restrain a patient at the Binghamton Psychiatric Center, when he went on a rampage in one of the day rooms.

No one was injured, but the patient caused thousands of dollars in damage.

"It is fortunate no one was injured in the Binghamton incident," said Benson. "Every year, dozens of our members who have been assaulted on the job file claims under the PEF ATAC insurance program, and the majority of those employees are from the Office of Mental Health.

"Clearly, the state must make some changes in its mental-health policies to protect its workers and the public," Benson said.

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