NEW MENTAL HOSPITAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 299, 14 December 1908, Page 2

NEW MENTAL HOSPITAL.

A NEW SCHEME. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Wellington, Last Night. The site of the central mental hospital which is to be established on the Nortn Island Afain Trunk railway, and Crown ' lands will be utilised. .Many and varied ' considerations have entered into the matter of selection—access, area, climate, quality of soil, and so on, and all the while the Department has had in view the fact that, in establishing the hospital it would as far as possible seek to erect an institution which would enable tile officers in charge to carry into effect the latest and most up-to-date theories for the treatment of the insane. There will be no big blocks of buildings; the structures will lie designed more particularly for the purpose of facilitating the work of classification, and, where necessary, separate treatment. In the course of time, the new hospital will, it is expected, ibcwiine a self-contained community, growing its own vegetables, grain, meat, and so on, because the area available will be some thousands of acres, capable of cultivation for all sorts of purposes, and if the experiment succeeds, able to provide from its own labor the cost of running. The curative effects of classification and small communities of inmates, in conjunction with the up-to-date system of treatment consequent thereon, are the objects chiefly aimed at, but with the large area of land occupied there are possibilities of economical working. j The new liovenunent House is to be erected on the land now occupied by the Mount View Mental Hospital, and llie work is to be put in hand as soon as possible. . At the commencement of operations, only a portion of the inmates will be disturbed, and the extensions now going on at Souclill', Porirua. Auckland and Waitati will be sufficient .0 provide for their accommodation. Meanwhile tin- erection of the various blocks of buildings at the new mental hospital will he carried on with the necessary expedition, and it is anticipated that within only a few months a considerable amount of accommodation will have been provided. The policy will be to draft there all the patients who are cnimble of aiding in the development of the institution, patients who can work while the curative process is going on, leaving to the other institutions the 1 care of those patients who have no industrial value.