ED doctors in Darwin say they have resorted to sedating and intubating patients with severe mental illness because of a lack of staffed psychiatric beds.

Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM) president Dr Clare Skinner defended the last-resort approach, which she said was “deeply distressing” for patients and their doctors.

But with up to 10 patients with mental illness “stuck” in ED at a time, NT doctors were under huge pressure to keep patients and staff safe. 

“These severely unwell patients get stuck for hours — or even days — with their symptoms increasing in severity until doctors are forced to make extremely difficult decisions to keep the patient, other patients in the ED and staff safe from harm,” Dr Skinner said in a media statement.