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Whatever happened to all the patients?

Vic Barlow
29/ 8/2007

DRIVING down Victoria Road today I spotted a sign for 'luxury apartments with panoramic views' on the site of the old Parkside Hospital.

I made a small detour to check them out and it was absolutely true, executive accommodation at its best. So why did I feel sad?

Architects have done a brilliant job, successful couples will acquire prestigious homes bringing wealth to the town, so what's my problem?

As I looked around the site I couldn't help thinking about the previous occupants. Whatever happened to them?

At its peak the hospital provided a home (temporary or permanent) for over 1,000 troubled souls, many of whom would not have survived without it. Parkside wasn't perfect, some who yearned for rehabilitation were denied, but it was a safe sanctuary and gave much needed relief and reassurance to families struggling to cope with the ravages of mental illness.

With individual building plots in the area worth a small fortune, the proceeds from the sale of Parkside Hospital should have funded an excellent modern psychiatric facility, but it never happened.

Under the guise of care in the community, beds available for the most vulnerable in our society shrunk to a mere twenty, and even those came under threat.

What happened to all that money? The sale of the site alone must have raised millions, but they didn't just sell a vacant site, they sold historic buildings with unique architecture ripe for developers to exploit.

At a time when building plots were as rare as Yangtze River Dolphins, they sold the entire Parkside estate. Some serious money changed hands in that deal.

But, while wealthy developers moved several notches up the Rich List, desperate families were left crying out for support, and I just can't reconcile the two.

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