About 50 psychiatric services staff members attended a stop-work meeting yesterday to formulate a plan to address the "crisis".

Health and Community Services Union organiser Gail Drummond said the meeting was in response to a number of reports of harassment and bullying.

"We'd like to bring to the forefront of management's mind that there is a lot of bullying and harassment from management," she said.

Ballarat Health Services chief executive officer Andrew Rowe was unavailable for comment.

A staff member, who asked not to be named, said it was a dire situation.

"The service is in crisis," he said.

"It's never been like this before."

He said staff were under immense stress as management was "always telling us what a bad job we're doing".

"We've lost more staff in the last 18 months than probably in the last 10 years, I'd guess," he said.

"Sick leave is up probably three times."

He said staff were also being given unrealistic workloads and being overlooked for promotions, with management hiring under-qualified staff from outside the organisation.

Another employee said her main concern was the increased workloads.

"We used to have about 20 caseloads per clinician, and that was fairly high, but now we're up to over 30 per clinician," she said.

"It's also the extra scrutiny - everything needs to be checked to the enth degree, with extra paperwork and attendance to meetings."

She said staff were also being overlooked for professional development.

"Staff internally are being overlooked," she said.

Trades Hall secretary Graeme Shearer, who attended the stop-work meeting, said he was concerned by the issues raised.

"Bullying in the workplace will not be tolerated," he said.

"I would encourage management of the hospital to enter into serious discussions with the Health and Community Services Union to ensure any identified incidents of bullying are stamped out."

Ms Drummond said staff would stop work again if the issues were not resolved.