Budge Cuts Caused Florida Mental Health Crisis

If you think this can't happen to veterans then consider far too many do not go to the VA for help. Guess where they end up when they are in crisis and need emergency mental health care if they don't go to the VA?

My God! Read this article and then contact your elected official for an explanation or vote for his/her termination!

Insane. Invisible. In Danger
Tampa Bay Times
Leonora LaPeter Anton
Michael Braga
Anthony Cormier
First in a series
Oct. 29, 2015

Instead of hiring more guards, adding nurses or increasing counseling sessions for patients, DCF and state lawmakers kept cutting.

FLORIDA’S STATE-FUNDED MENTAL HOSPITALS are supposed to be safe places to house and treat people who are a danger to themselves or others.

But years of neglect and $100 million in budget cuts have turned them into treacherous warehouses where violence is out of control and patients can’t get the care they need.

Since 2009, violent attacks at the state’s six largest hospitals have doubled.

Nearly 1,000 patients ordered to the hospitals for close supervision managed to injure themselves or someone else.

A mental patient stabbed orderly Tonya Cook over and over. Watch more surveillance videos.Alachua County Sheriff’s Office For years, the state Legislature, the governor’s office and the agencies that oversee Florida’s mental hospitals ignored the chaos and continued cutting. Then state regulators hid the full extent of violence and neglect from the public.

The Tampa Bay Times and Sarasota Herald-Tribune spent more than a year chronicling life in these institutions, interviewing patients and their families and examining thousands of pages of government records. Using police and hospital reports from across the state, reporters pieced together the first comprehensive list of injuries and violent attacks inside Florida’s mental institutions.
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A mental patient stabbed orderly Tonya Cook over and over. Watch more surveillance videos.