Tokanui Psychiatric Hospital
Encyclopedia
Psychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental hospitals, are hospitals specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialise only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients...
located approximately 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) southeast of Te Awamutu
Te Awamutu
Te Awamutu is a town in the Waikato in the North Island of New Zealand. It is the council seat of the Waipa District and serves as a service town for the farming communities which surround it...
, New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
.
History
Tokanui Hospital was opened in July, 1912, and was closed in March 1998. The first patients travelled from another psychiatric hospital in Wellington by train. The hospital was self sufficient in its early days, with its own farm, bakery, laundry, and even a sewing room where patients clothes were made. At its peak there were over a thousand patients living in the hospital, but by the late 1960s the beginning of the end was coming. In 1974, the government decided no more buildings were to be erected in the large psychiatric hospitals, and small psychiatric wards began to be opened attached to general hospitals in urban areas.The world wide move to deinstitutionalisation
Deinstitutionalisation
Deinstitutionalization or deinstitutionalization is the process of replacing long-stay psychiatric hospitals with less isolated community mental health service for those diagnosed with a mental disorder or developmental disability. Deinstitutionalization can have multiple definitions; the first...
and community care gathered momentum in the 1980s, and the government produced another white paper on deinstitutionalisation, and the Principal nurse of the time travelled overseas to look at facilities in the UK. Many staff found it impossible to believe that the hospital which had been a major employer in the rural area, and provided jobs for entire families over generations would ever close. Opinion was divided as to whether it should stay open, with some staff strongly believing it ought to, and others thinking it was time for a different way of doing things.
Patients who had lived for years of their lives at the hospital were thoroughly institutionalised and saw the hospital as home, other patients who came for shorter periods suffering from clinical depression
Clinical depression
Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
, anxiety
Anxiety
Anxiety is a psychological and physiological state characterized by somatic, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components. The root meaning of the word anxiety is 'to vex or trouble'; in either presence or absence of psychological stress, anxiety can create feelings of fear, worry, uneasiness,...
, OCD, etc., felt isolated and missed their families and friends. The catchment area for the hospital extended to New Plymouth on the west coast and Gisborne
Gisborne, New Zealand
-Economy:The harbour was host to many ships in the past and had developed as a river port to provide a more secure location for shipping compared with the open roadstead of Poverty Bay which can be exposed to southerly swells. A meat works was sited beside the harbour and meat and wool was shipped...
on the east coast, and up towards Auckland
Auckland
The Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...
, and across to the Bay of Plenty
Bay of Plenty
The Bay of Plenty , often abbreviated to BOP, is a region in the North Island of New Zealand situated around the body of water of the same name...
. Patients from these areas found it difficult to maintain contact, and over time became isolated from their families.
The Hospital Board was forward thinking and put aside money in the early 1990s to set up residential services in the community for both intellectually disabled and chronically mentally ill and two trusts were formed to develop these services (Rakau Ora, now called Pathways, and the Waikato Community Living Trust). The move towards closure gained momentum, and by March 1998 the last long stay patient had left the site for "Community care".
The land had been taken originally under the Public Works Act for the hospital, and has since reverted to its original owners (the local iwi
Iwi
In New Zealand society, iwi form the largest everyday social units in Māori culture. The word iwi means "'peoples' or 'nations'. In "the work of European writers which treat iwi and hapū as parts of a hierarchical structure", it has been used to mean "tribe" , or confederation of tribes,...
). Many of the buildings remain intact, although the Nurses Home, G Ward, and H Ward have been demolished.
There is a cemetery on the old hospital farm which contains the remains of over 500 patients, both Maori and Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an, buried there between 1912 and 1968. After this time pauper patients were buried in the local Te Awamutu
Te Awamutu
Te Awamutu is a town in the Waikato in the North Island of New Zealand. It is the council seat of the Waipa District and serves as a service town for the farming communities which surround it...
cemetery. The farm is now run by Ministry of Agriculture, and there is a Memorial stone at the cemetery site..
Current use
The hospital farm was handed over for agricultural research in the 1970s. The hospital buildings remain derelict, and the site is not used, though parts have been fenced off for grazing. The fifty or so staff houses are rented out, and the sewerage system which used to be run by the hospital is presumably still in operation to service these homes.Security
While most valuable items have been removed, large amounts of copperCopper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
spouting remains on some of the buildings. Other materials which may be attractive to thieves are still in place, as none of the buildings have been demolished
Demolition
Demolition is the tearing-down of buildings and other structures, the opposite of construction. Demolition contrasts with deconstruction, which involves taking a building apart while carefully preserving valuable elements for re-use....
. Health hazard
Hazard
A hazard is a situation that poses a level of threat to life, health, property, or environment. Most hazards are dormant or potential, with only a theoretical risk of harm; however, once a hazard becomes "active", it can create an emergency situation. A hazard does not exist when it is not...
s also exist, namely asbestos
Asbestos
Asbestos is a set of six naturally occurring silicate minerals used commercially for their desirable physical properties. They all have in common their eponymous, asbestiform habit: long, thin fibrous crystals...
insulation
Building insulation
building insulation refers broadly to any object in a building used as insulation for any purpose. While the majority of insulation in buildings is for thermal purposes, the term also applies to acoustic insulation, fire insulation, and impact insulation...
. Because of this, Waikato Security Services security guards watch the area 24/7
24/7
24/7 is an abbreviation which stands for "24 hours a day, 7 days a week", usually referring to a business or service available at all times without interruption...
.