SOON after she entered Wagga Base Hospital's emergency department about 8.20am on July 5, 2007, mental health nurse Colleen Redding could see Justin Berkhout was a very troubled man.

Mr Berkhout had been admitted to the hospital at 5.45pm the previous day because of an overdose of tabl-ets and was still in the emergency department almost 15 hours later.

No mental health assessment had been done because Mr Berk-hout had not been medically cleared from his overdose by the time the previous mental health nurse had ended her shift about 11.30pm.

Ms Redding began an assessment about 9.15am and determined Mr Berkhout was at a high risk of further self-harm.

According to Ms Redding's evidence yesterday at an inquest into Mr Berkhout's death, he told her his mood on a scale of one to 10 was one and also said in a quiet and sullen voice that he was hearing voices in his head ruminating about self harm.

Ms Redding consulted with the on-call psychiatrist and told him she believed Mr Berkh-out should be admitted to the mental health in-patient facility known as Gissing House.

Before a bed could be found for him, Mr Berk-hout had hanged himself from a bar above his bed in a cubicle just metres away from a nurses station in the very busy department.

The inquest has heard evidence that a curtain around the bed may have been fully drawn for up to 90 minutes before Mr Berkhout was discovered, about 2.30pm.

Ms Redding said she hadn't seen the curtain fully drawn around Mr Berkhout's cubicle during the day, but if she had she would not have been OK with it.