About Us | impatient

Who we are

Ms
Sue Armstrong

Award winning trained fine artist, video producer, mental health consumer and peer advocate, I come from a family of advocates and activists, so I am considered genetically radical among my friends and colleagues.

Courtesy of Arlene Sachon

Photography and the

City of Moonee Valley

During the past 3 decades, I have experienced numerous forms of assault whilst being hospitalised and witnessed far too much harrasment from the male patients and staff of these suppposedly safe places, so I have dedicated my life to advocating for positive progression for female rights and welfare in all areas and all sectors, especially for those females that have mental health issues and are admitted to hospital when they are at their most vulnerable.

Professor Jayashri
Kulkarni

Currently the Director of the Monash Alfred Psychiatry research centre (MAPrc), and Head, Central Clinical School, Department of Psychiatry.

Immediate Past President, International Association for Women's Mental Health

Professor Kulkarni is internationally recognised for her expertise in the treatment of mental illness, particularly in women’s mental health, where she works in the area of hormone impact on the mental health of women and also broader research in the area of women’s welfare.

The Impatient project

is a joint equal partnership between

Ms Sue E. Armstrong and Professor Jayashri Kulkarni.

Many people have commented that there is a lovely symmetry that a female peer advocate with a lived experience of mental illness, and a respectful psychiatrist, are working together.

In October 1990 Sue E. Armstrong choose to come out in public on the 7.30 Report (ABC TV Victoria, Australia) as an ex-patient at Royal Park Psychiatric Hospital (RPPH)

discussing a sexual assault at RPPH.

Sue represented the Mental Health Legal Centre (MHLC), and together with

Terry Melbourne representing the Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council (VMIAC),

they called then for the reinstatement of female only psychiatric wards.

Professor Kulkarni became a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists in 1989 and was awarded a PhD from Monash University in 1997

for her thesis “Women and Psychosis”.

Sue E. Armstrong and Jayashri Kulkarni between them,

have 60 years working on female mental illness issues.

They have much expertise, knowledge and wisdom to share.