Summary: Feelings ran high at this debate touching on gender issues within psychiatric services. The audience started the evening strongly behind the motion supporting gender-segregated in-patient services but with a number of voters waiting to be persuaded. The proposers of the motion centred their arguments on issues of women’s safety and were opposed by a counter-attack emphasising the importance of patient choice. We heard several women service users give heartfelt testimony to their experience of the vulnerability of women within mixed acute wards, in particular to sexual exploitation and violence. Although nobody denied that women had the right to safety as in-patients, it was argued that maybe a better solution lay in improving the general quality of in-patient care and giving careful consideration to ward architecture and staffing levels to allow safety for all. Would sex-segregation not be a move to benefit women and disadvantage men? Lynne Clayton spiritedly attacked this notion on the grounds that it was unreasonable to put women at risk so that they could act as ‘civilising’ influences for men. Interestingly, Dr Eleanor Cole’s overview of the literature showed that research into the proposed benefits of gender-separated services was equivocal. Should we not, therefore, take more time to reflect and research the issue before committing to change? Otherwise we might fail to learn from the past experience of segregated wards that was illustrated by Professor Peter Tyrer. At the end of it all, there were fewer people on the fence but the percentages barely changed. In terms of acute in-patient psychiatric wards at least, the feeling seemed to be that men were bad for women’s mental health and that these services ought therefore to be sex-segregated.
