The Lake Alice Hospital

The Lake Alice Hospital website is the only/first website dedicated to the notorious psychiatric hospital. A snippet from their history page.

Located at Rangitikei New Zealand, it was opened In August 1950

Lake Alice is named after the Lake which shares the same name, which is the second lake to the south of the estate. Built as a psychiatric hospital, the complex consists of 56 Acres with 10 two story 11 bed villas, a fire station, 2 swimming pools, Maximum secure villa, large staff housing building, 2 libraries, a large community hall, chapel, morgue and 4 two storied 50 bed villas along with plenty of garaging, administration building, glass houses gardens, separate dining rooms & several rugby/cricket patch’s.

[...] The most unbelievable tale to be told was the behavior that went on between the patients & the staff.

During the early 1970's- 1980’s mistreatment went on towards patients who were given ECT, also known as electro-convulsive therapy (shock treatment), with most of the time this would cause the person to pass out. Painful injections of paraldehyde were also a common practice. There has been many rumors of sexual abuse.

While there could never be away to replace what happened to these people there has been government pay outs to sums of over $10 million to the claimants.

The hospital doors where officially shut in late 1999. Now days the hospital stands abandoned most of the buildings are very run down & trashed from either outsiders or cattle which roam the land.

People do live onsite to keep the property secure from further vandals

In July 2006 the 56 acres & buildings was sold to a developer, who has plans to develop the estate, He hopes to subdivide the property although there has been no progress since it was brought.''See newspaper articles for more information''

This is a decent website, although the text needs some polishing, spell and grammar checking, etc. to look more professional, and some of the local color of New Zealand English should be kept. There are a number of photos of the various facilities at the hospital, not available elsewhere.

Also, the site is somewhat sympathetic to the mental health industry, which is a minus, because of the massive profiteering that goes on with people's lives. The website author does have a specific page dedicated to the scandal, but there is so much more that could be said about it. We at Psychwatch have a number of earlier stories about the Lake Alice Scandal and some of the criminals involved

The web author misses the social veneer of an industry that with a pleasant smile cheerfully fried the brains of dozens of people, which is unfortunate. This is a common mistake, although sheer incompetence is also a fault in the industry.