Mental health at Tokanui in the early years

Abstract

Tokanui was the first hospital to be built entirely to the villa design, and as such, its physically separate wards presented considerable opportunity for the classification and treatment of patients. Piecing together information contained in the remaining records, this chapter describes the formative years at Tokanui, during which not only a hospital, but also a community was established. The narrative which follows tells of buildings erected, land broken, cultivated and beautified, of hard physical labour and trying conditions. Above all, it is a narrative of the people who worked and lived, however fleetingly, at Tokanui and without whom the hospital would not have had a purpose. As the first new hospital to be built after provincial time, Tokanui, in many respects, led the way in developments made in the accommodation and treatment of the psychiatrically ill and those with intellectual disability.