Where psychiatric and psychological evidence establishes chronic anxiety and depression at a high level at the time of offending, and expert opinion links the mental disturbance to the offending, a sentencing judge must give substantial weight to the Verdins principles in the instinctive synthesis. A finding that the evidence is 'inconclusive' is not open where the expert evidence consistently identifies mental disturbance as a contributor to the offending. Continuing mental disturbance not shown to have altered at time of sentence requires a finding that imprisonment is unusually onerous under the fifth Verdins principle.
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