Lake Alice Hospital



Lake Alice Hospital was a rural psychiatric facilty, near Marton in Rangitikei, New Zealand. It was opened in 1950, and had a Maximum Security unit.

Like many New Zealand psychiatric hospitals, Lake Alice was self-sufficient, with its own farm, workshop, bakery, laundry, and fire station. It also had swimming pools as well as glasshouses and vegetable gardens.

The facility shut down in 1999. The buildings and 56-hectare grounds were purchased in July, 2006 by an undisclosed buyer.

Former patients of the hospital's child and adolescent unit have made allegations of abuse there during the 1970s, including the use of electroconvulsive therapy and paraldehyde injections as punishment. The New Zealand government issued a formal apology in 2001, and has paid out a total of NZ$10.7 million in compensation to 183 former patients. The former head of the unit gave up the practice of medicine in order to forestall a disciplinary hearing by the Medical Practitioners Board of Victoria.