TE PUHI MENTAL HOSPITAL.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 362, 20 May 1911, Page 3

TE PUHI MENTAL HOSPITAL.

The Minister in Charge of Hospitals, the Hon. Geo. Fowlds, has just returned from a visit to Te Kuiti, says the "Star," where, in company with Drs. Hay and Gribben, of the Mental Hospitals and Prisons Departments, he inspected the site now finally selected for a mental hospital and reformatory farm. A temporary building for the accommodation of about twenty prisoners will be finished in about a month, and as soon as it is ready, will be occupied by men who will go on witn roadmaking, and the erection of permanent buildings. "We have fixed a site for the first buildings on the mental hospital farm," said the Minister, "and it will be located about 11 miles from Te Puhi station. The plans and specifications are practically complete for the other buildings, and tenders will be called at an early date. The main hospital will be erected some four or five miles distant from the building which is now being erected, and it is probable that a branch line of railway will ultimately be built by prison labour and mental hospital patients, so as to connect it with the main line. The building first to be erected will accommodate about 300 patients, and the main building will not be gone on with for a couple of years. The site is an ideal one, that for the mental hospital covering about 5000 acres, and that for the reformatory farm about 1300 acres. Asked what would be the effect on existing mental hospitals, the Minister said the existing institutions had already been developed to as large a size as was desirable, having due regard for the area of land with which they were surrounded. In nearly every case they were getting overcrowded, and in building a central hospital at Te Puhi they were looking twenty-five years ahead. In future the only buildings to be added to existing institutions would be those which would enable better classification of the inmates, and in this connection plans were now being prepared for additions to the Auckland mental hospital for the treatment of refractory prisoners. The tendency to overcrowding was greater at the Auckland institution than any other in New Zealand.