“The situation with section 19(b) patients is that every single day we’re one incident away from being front-page news. There are all sorts of things that could go wrong.”

This is psychiatrist and Conjoint Professor Matthew Large. He is describing the alarming pressures facing doctors and hospital staff tasked by the court system with assessing and caring for defendants with self-evident mental health problems.

The strain at St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney became so severe last month that a clinical director asked magistrates at Downing Centre Local Court to temporarily stop referring defendants.

At the time, the hospital had been attempting to care for 17 mental health patients in its ED, with 15 waiting to be admitted because its acute mental health unit was full.