Dilemma for judges who deal with mentally ill -.

(From Canberra Times)

T HE PLIGHT of two women brought before the ACT Magistrates Court in two weeks has exposed a major problem facing mental- health services. A magistrate was forced to remand Jacqueline Louise Bellamy - a homeless woman with a mental illness - in custody because no accommodation was available for her. Tammy Veale Holm, who is on an involuntary mental health treatment order, was put up in a hotel when she was refused re-entry to Canberra Hospital's psychiatric unit after allegedly assaulting staff. The courts are grappling with cases involving mentally ill people who have no appropriate place to stay. Australia embraced deinstutionalisation about a decade ago, which meant closing psychiatric institutions and moving the mentally ill into the community An unintended consequence has been the increase of mentally ill people put in a different institution - prison. Professor Richard Lamb, director of psychiatry, law and public policy at the University of Southern California's School of Medicine, says ''Rather than hospitalisation and …