Retirement, according to Anne Deveson, is a stupid word. At 79, she's finishing a doctoral thesis on peace at the University of Western Sydney, which will be published as a book next year about the time she turns 80.

Deveson has been a writer, broadcaster and filmmaker on social justice issues for more than half a century. She's agitated for change for diverse causes, including poverty, disability, ageing, child abuse and women's rights.

Both her parents had a strong sense of social and political justice. “If you're brought up in a family with those kind of expectations, you will choose to behave in a way that's just and have an understanding and curiosity about the world,” Deveson says. “For a while it rather worried me though, jumping from one thing to the next. It seemed a bit flibberty gibet.”

When she was appointed to the 1974 Royal Commission on Human Relationships, however, everything came together. “I realised that my skills and interests were being able to communicate quite complex political and social issues to a wide range of people,” she says.

The cause she is best known for is mental illness, particularly schizophrenia. Her 1991 book, Tell Me I'm Here, chronicled the illness and death of her elder son, Jonathan, after he was diagnosed with schizophrenia in high school.

For a journalist accustomed to publicising other people's stories, writing honestly about her own feelings and actions was difficult. But Deveson says there was little information available then.

Deveson was born in what was then known as Malaya, where her English father was a rubber plantation manager. The family returned to England when she was two and she was largely raised by a protective nanny while her mother worked and her father returned to Malaya after a hotel venture collapsed.

When England was bombed during World War II, she and her mother joined her father in Malaya briefly, then moved to Perth, then back to England at the end of the war.

“It was a more turbulent life than I realised at the time,” says Deveson, who migrated permanently to Australia in 1957 and continued working as a political and current affairs journalist.

During the 1980s, she ran the Australian Film, Television and Radio School and chaired the South Australian Film Corporation, as well as co-founding SANE Australia.

Now, she's managed to cut her commitments back to being a member of the NSW Medical Tribunal and writing her thesis on peace.

The big questions

Biggest break Being appointed to the Royal Commission on Human Relationships in 1974. There'd been huge social changes since the war and we looked at whether our laws and policies had kept up. It took me into a whole new world of going into issues deeper than journalism allowed.

Biggest achievement Helping combat the stigma against mental illness and dealing with issues that had been hidden, such as child sexual abuse and rape in marriage.

Biggest regret When my parents died in England, I was in Australia with young kids and I couldn't afford the air fares to go to their funerals and honour them.

Best investment I've had great joy from my children and grandchildren. And I learned so much from my times filming in Africa, about the resilience and grace of people living in dire poverty.

Worst investment Buying some swamp land with no legal access [at Cattai Creek, near Windsor, NSW]. In winter, it became an enormous expanse of water and we had to swim in.

Attitude to money Vague – I don't think about it very much. When I have it, I enjoy it. When I don't have it, I manage until I get some more. I don't invest any more. Every time I've done that, the bottom's fallen out of the market.

Personal philosophy Live generously and love well. It's quite simple really.