The chemical question: does focusing on hormones undermine mental healthcare?

According to some, not factoring hormone fluctuation into women's mental healthcare can be dangerous. For others, it feeds into outdated stereotypes

It's my hormones, doc. It's my hormones, and no one's listened to that."

It was the late 1980s, in what was once Royal Park Psychiatric Hospital in inner-city Melbourne. A brash young registrar doing her training in psychiatry had arrived at her first hospital placement, full of ideas and enthusiasm. Perhaps to put a bit of scuff on that bright ambition, she was assigned to look after the female patients in the back ward".