Did you know larger mental health homes saw more safety incidents than smaller ones?

Imagine walking into a mental health home where staff and residents live together. A new survey asked 159 workers from 68 different homes across seven Italian provinces about safety problems they saw in the last year. They wanted to know if the size of the home or who worked there changed how often things went wrong. The answer was yes, and the numbers were surprising. In total, workers reported 4,432 incidents they saw personally and 4,807 they heard about from colleagues. Behavior-related events, like conflicts or agitation, were the most frequent type of problem. The study also found that homes with more than ten employees had significantly higher rates of these incidents compared to smaller ones. Additionally, residential facilities saw more incidents reported by colleagues than non-residential ones. Non-healthcare workers, like cleaners or cooks, reported witnessing fewer incidents to colleagues compared to healthcare workers, who only reported 28% fewer incidents. This suggests that everyone in the home matters for safety, not just the doctors and nurses.