Particle.news
Download on the App Store

Bondi Inquest Nears Conclusion With Push for Mental-Health Overhaul and Call to Probe Killer’s Psychiatrist

Counsel assisting urged sweeping mental-health reforms following families’ calls to scrutinize the treating psychiatrist.

Overview

  • Final submissions outlined about 26 draft recommendations, with the coroner expected to finalise them before Christmas.
  • Counsel assisting said decades of underinvestment left severe gaps in community care and housing, citing a fall from roughly 1,150 short-stay hostel beds in 1991 to fewer than 300 today.
  • The proposed reforms emphasise preventative, chronic-care models, clearer schizophrenia management guidelines, and a leadership role for NSW Health to drive implementation.
  • A panel of psychiatrists concluded Joel Cauchi was psychotic during the attack after being effectively unmedicated for nearly five years and living homeless in Sydney.
  • Victims’ families asked that psychiatrist Andrea Boros-Lavack be referred to a regulator after what counsel called confusing, inconsistent evidence, including a withdrawn claim that Cauchi was not psychotic.