Zac Duncan had turned-up at the Albury Community Mental Health Service last year with an aunt to get his routine injection of Flupenthixol, an anti-psychotic drug also know as Depot.

He attacked the nurse, the force of his punch to her arm knocking her sideways to the wall before she fell to the floor, after initially storming out of the building.

He yelled out: "Who do I have to kill to get help?"

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Magistrate Richard Funston told Duncan this week that he had been encouraged by his "quite positive" sentence assessment report.

"It's really important that you do everything that the doctors tell you what to do," Mr Funston said in placing Duncan on a community corrections order.

A psychologist's report put before Albury Local Court told of how Duncan, 24, had "quite a history of intensive and long-standing mental health problems".

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Mr Funston said it was absolutely imperative that Duncan remain off illicit drugs, specifically methamphetamine.

"He can't begin using," he said.

"If he uses, he will end up in jail. For Mr Duncan to use drugs, it will be a disaster for him now."

At an appearance last October, his lawyer had the case adjourned to allow for a hearing of an application under section 33 of the NSW Mental Health Act.

That was to have him directed to mental health treatment, rather than the course now taken of going through the judicial system.

Duncan previously pleaded guilty to a charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm over the attack on the nurse.

Police said Duncan had a lengthy criminal history, was intellectually disabled, had low intelligence and was diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder and schizophrenia.

He was a patient at the time of the assault of Albury hospital's mental health unit, Nolan House.

The injections helped reduce his auditory and visual hallucinations.