High stone walls, locked doors, padded cells and muffled screams — these are common images most people have of mental hospitals. To some extent, St Giles Hospital on Reservoir Rd in Suva quite fitted the image.
It had the high stone walls that were built back in the 1920s, more than 100 years ago. But padded cells and screams, were out, made obsolete by modern drugs and more humane attitudes to people suffering mental and emotional disturbances.
An article in The Fiji Times on November 14, 1976 talked about the environment and atmosphere inside the walls of St Giles Hospital. In those days, the St Giles Board of Visitors, the hospital head, Dr Ram Narayan, and the psychiatric sister in charge, Sister Q.
Mohammed, would take visitors behind the locked doors to show them the reality of the hospital and talk about plans for using the nearby, almost empty, St Elizabeth’s home.
About 160 patients lived in St Giles at the time, almost 120 of them longterm, chronic patients admitted before modern drug treatments were available. The hospital also treated about 300 outpatients a month, some of whom needed to be hospitalised for periods if room was available.
Dr Narayan had a staff of three doctors, including one away on a training course. Sister Mohammed was the only trained psychiatric nurse and she was helped by two assistant supervisors. There was a dietitian, a small number of kitchen, domestic, labouring and office staff and 78 orderlies.
This may have looked like a large number, but it was considerably less than the basic requirement to man a three-shift system operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Lack of staff meant Dr Narayan was forced to lock the strong green doors in the walls surrounding the wards early each afternoon.
He would have liked to operate an open ward system, where all patients except those who were violent or newly arrived could wander at will. But this was not possible, particularly as patients were mixed together.
Putting different types of illnesses and conditions into separate wards not possible. Hospital authorities did their best with the old-fashioned buildings. Gleaming white paint covered everything and was kept spotlessly clean, although like most hospitals, it lacked a homely atmosphere.
The women’s ward verandas were scattered with highly polished brass vases crammed with flowers from the flourishing hospital gardens, which helped enhance the antiseptic atmosphere.
There were plenty of open doors, but those with heavy locks and barred windows were a reminder that this was a mental hospital built before the turn of the century.
Each ward had a section for disturbed or violent patients, who remained there until they were calm enough to mix with the others. In the men’s area, a sweeping view of Suva Harbour was partially obscured by the Bua Ward, a block of four bare cement cells with mattresses as the only furnishing.
In the men’s ward there were also single rooms with strongly barred doors where the criminally insane were put each afternoon at 3pm, when there were too few staff on duty to supervise them properly outside.
Sister Mohammed said each morning patients were encouraged, but not forced, to help with hospital chores such as cleaning, collecting laundry, working in the kitchen, dining room and garden. A small hospital building from Wainibokasi, re-erected at St Giles, was used for occupation therapy.
Patients learned bookbinding when materials were available, used a small library, made baskets, mats, colorful patchwork quilts and doormats.
Money from the sale of handcrafts and flowers from the garden went into the patients’ comfort fund and was used to buy recreational equipment for everyone and necessities such as soap and powder for those whose families could not afford.
Volleyball, library sessions, community singing, cards and other indoor games, dances and visiting filled the patient’s afternoons. Dr Narayan and Sister Mohammed were concerned about the effects of overcrowding and the lack of space for recreation and occupational therapy for patients.
“When they had to live too close together they got on each other’s nerves,” Dr Narayan said. It was important for their recovery for them to have a pleasant environment and activities to interest and occupy them.
He hoped that the use of St Elizabeth’s buildings and well-kept gardens would relieve some of the pressure and make life a more pleasant for the patients – although they cannot provide the entire solution to overcrowding and under-staffing problems.
The leprosy patients, who formerly lived at St Elizabeth’s, had moved out to PJ Twomey Hospital in December the previous year. About 20 chains of unmade road and a little help from the community now separate St Giles patients from St Elizabeth’s and the facilities now available there.
The Public Works Department was scheduled to construct the road, providing access between the hospital complexes, sometime during the first half of next year.
Then the hospital hoped to get a workshop set up, a little theater operating and all sorts of things,” the chairperson of St Giles board, Grace Deoki, said.
Mrs Deoki said the hospital desperately needed support from the community, service groups and individuals.
