Mental health experts call for female-only wards at hospitals to prevent sex abuse, harassment

A top psychiatrist has warned of a scourge of sexual abuse against female patients in mental health wards in Victorian hospitals, and says mixed units could derail treatment for those who have been abused by men.

Women, including family violence victim-survivors, are being sexually assaulted and harassed during hospital stays, a leading psychiatrist says.

Psychiatry professor Jayashri Kulkarni wants more women treated in female-only mental health wards, warning that mixed units put women at risk and could derail treatment for those abused by men.

She said the problems in mixed wards had been known for years.

“There are rapes, there are awful sexual assaults, there are harassments, there are physical assaults,” she said.

The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists recommends mental health services have women-only wards, while ­England banned shared wards in most areas in public hospitals in 2010 and tracks breaches.

A 2014 study found reports of sexual assault were six times higher on The Alfred’s mixed mental health ward than in its women’s ward, and Victoria’s royal commission into the mental health system found ­violence against women was “entrenched” on inpatient wards, recommending female-only wards for acute settings.

Mixed mental health units are putting women at risk, a top psychiatrist claims. Picture: iStock

But Professor Kulkarni said despite all this evidence, most patients still stayed in mixed psychiatry wards.

She hopes the example of Cabrini’s Lisa Thurin Women’s Health Centre – Australia’s first women’s mental health hospital – can change that.

She was the founding medical director of the 30-bed private facility in Melbourne and said it had inspired change at other services.

“We’ve developed a model that we’re now exporting to other states,” she said.

RANZCP president Elizabeth Moore said female ­patients reported “high rates of sexual assault and harassment”, and called for a national reporting system.

“Breaches of sexual safety are a breach of human rights,” she said.

Professor Kulkarni said many of the centre’s patients’ illnesses were linked to past trauma – 70 per cent were victims of domestic violence – and they were also more likely to open up about this in a safe, ­female-only space.

“We’ve had comments from women saying for the first time they can really talk about their experience,” she said.

Professor Kulkarni said psychiatry was often “gender blind” and a lot of group program work and psychotherapies – particularly drug rehab – were “targeted for males only”.

“When I was a medical student, we were taught medicine with the archetypal patient, a 70kg white male,” she said.

Experts say women are forgotten in Victoria’s mental health system.

Funding constraints pushed services towards “one-size-fits-all programs” in which women were forgotten.

“There is urgent need for gender-specific approaches, ­especially around the domestic violence crisis,” she said.

Dr Moore agreed psychiatry, while improving, had a “long way to go” and said more mental health services should be tailored to treating both women and the lasting trauma of gendered violence.

“Victim-survivors are falling through the cracks in Australia’s mental health system,” she said, adding that “wide-scale fiscal neglect” of the mental healthcare system made it hard to ­deliver the trauma-informed care that was needed.

A Health Department spokesman said every Victorian deserved to feel safe seeking treatment and care.

“That’s why since the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System we’ve made the largest investment into mental health in Australia’s history, but there’s still more to do,” he said. “Our work to rebuild our mental health system from the ground up is moving at pace, with work under way on more than 90 per cent of recommendations from the royal commission.”