Tokanui Psychiatric Hospital

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Tokanui Psychiatric Hospital was a psychiatric hospital located approximately 14km southeast of Te Awamutu, New Zealand.HistoryTokanui 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 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, anxiety, 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 on the east coast, and up towards Auckland, and across to the Bay of Plenty. Patients from these areas found it difficult to maintain contact, and over time became isolated from their families.