Mental health behind bars
9th August 2011
By Melinda Ham
AT 19, Mr S* was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but refused to comply with follow-up after a hospital stay. When he was 23, he killed his stepfather during an acute psychotic episode fuelled by substance abuse.
He was arrested, charged and taken into custody, and immediately placed in the acute assessment unit at the Melbourne Assessment Prison, where clinicians decided he required involuntary hospitalisation for his psychosis.They transferred him to the Thomas Embling Hospital in Fairfield, a purpose-built forensic hospital, where he remained for six months before