Workers Need the Freedom to Negotiate

By Lee Saunders

For Tina Suckow, helping people who are struggling with mental illness is a calling. She always wanted to be a nurse, and while she understood that her job at Iowa’s Independence Mental Health Institute could be dangerous, nothing could have prepared her for what happened on Oct. 24 of last year. A patient — believed to be in the throes of a manic episode — brutally attacked and beat her, leaving her unconscious with injuries to the head, knee and shoulder.