This is a descriptive account of 22 psychiatric patients who precipitated themselves out of high buildings, usually the window of a psychiatric ward. The clinical characteristics of these subjects and the circumstances of the jump are studied. Some recommendations are made to try and prevent the severe consequences of this behaviour.

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Australasian psychiatry faces significant problems with respect to maldistribution of services. Governments are becoming more radical in their attempts to address this maldistribution and this has ethical implications for the profession itself and the practice of forensic psychiatry. Greater emphasis on the development of integrated and community-based forensic services, with leadership being provided by the profession itself, may deflect some of the present criticism, thereby allowing the subspecialty to more fully mature and develop with the approach of the new millennium.

No abstract