Ballarat Mental Hospital

Ballarat Mental Hospital was opened by the Victorian Government at Ballarat in 1893. It was located on a site that had previously been the Ballarat Industrial School, an earlier iteration of the Ballarat Asylum from 1877 to 1879, and the Ballarat Boys’ Reformatory. It was initially known as the Ballarat Asylum, then from 1905 to 1934 as the Ballarat Hospital for Insane, then Ballarat Mental Hospital until 1969, and finally as Lakeside Hospital.

The Ballarat Mental Hospital was primarily a hospital for long-term adult patients with mental illness and intellectual disabilities, however it is known to have also admitted young people under the age of 18. Patients were often transferred between Ballarat Mental Hospital and other Victorian mental health institutions. At its peak in 1959 Ballarat Mental Hospital had capacity for 1100 patients.

From 1912 Ballarat Mental Hospital ran a receiving house at Dana Street Ballarat, which admitted short-term patients (patient’s requiring admissions of over 2 months were transferred to the main hospital). In 1954 another receiving house called Novar was opened at 109 Webster Street, Ballarat. Both the Dana Street and Novar receiving houses occasionally admitted children, and in the 1960s admitted some mothers with their babies. A children’s clinic operated first at Novar, and was transferred to Norwood (another premises managed by the hospital) in 1960. This clinic was for children who had been referred to the hospital as out-patients (i.e. children who were not admitted to the hospital, but were receiving treatment from it). These children were often referred to the hospital by the children’s courts, schools, welfare organisations, and family doctors. In 1969 the Dana Street house was replaced by the Parklands Clinic, which was located on the main hospital site. Ballarat Mental Hospital closed in 1996.