Mental health advocates have increasingly called for the need to reinstate female-only psychatric wards. These campaigns are about improving the safety and experience of women in crisis, including reducing incidents of sexual assault.

This week’s edition of Women on the Line features an interview by Hope Mathumbu with Prof of Psychiatry Jayashri Kulkarni, director of the Monash Alfred Psychiatry Research Centre. Aoife Cooke speaks to campaigner Sue Armstrong, a Melbourne based activist with a psychiatric disability, who has been campaigning on this issue since the 1990s.