Four workers at the Pinel Psychiatric Institute were injured in an eruption of violence on the youth ward, and their union says the injuries prove that employees need protective gear such as Kevlar gloves, bulletproof vests and pepper spray.
The union tells La Presse that more than a dozen teenagers conspired last Friday to stage an attack on their attendants at the facility, in east end Montreal..
It started when two patients pretended to fight. That drew the Institute's special intervention union to the youth ward. When the employees arrived, they then found themselves facing not just two patients, but the others as well.
It was when they were trying to subdue the patients that the four workers were injured.
The union says shivs were later found on the floor, although they had not been used during the attack.
The union says the Institute likes to insist it is not a prison, and won't acknowledge that the special nature of the patients makes it more than just a typical health institution.