Forensic state patients at Sterkfontein Psychiatric Hospital: a 3-year follow-up of state patients admitted in 2004 and 2005

Abstract

Forensic psychiatry in South Africa came to be in the 1970’s following the introduction of the Mental Health Act of 1973 and the Criminal Procedures Act of 1977. Forensic psychiatric units offer psychiatric observation for defendants referred from the courts, as well as providing indefinite detention, for the purpose of treatment and rehabilitation, of those who have been declared unfit to stand trial and/or not criminally responsible due to a mental illness or defect. State patients are mentally ill offenders whose charges involved serious violence. Ultimately these state patients are released back into the community. There is a paucity of South African literature regarding the outcome of state patients.