Karori Lunatic Asylum

Karori Lunatic Asylum held and cared for patients with mental disorders in the Wellington Province of New Zealand from 1854 to 1873. The patients had been certified as lunatics, but were not considered a danger to the public. It was the country's first lunatic asylum that was independent of a prison. Karori was then a rural village isolated by a poor road, but it is now the westernmost suburb of Wellington.

At that time, asylums followed the principle of moral management. The staff were supposed to model calm and humane behaviour, while the patients went about their chores and leisure activities. But the staff were laypeople who simply managed the patients, they did not treat them.

Karori asylum offered an effective mental health service until the mid-1860s. However, by 1871, overcrowding and understaffing at the asylum led to calls for reform from a parliamentary committee. The provincial council responded by building Mount View Lunatic Asylum in Wellington city centre.

In 1872, a provincial inquiry concluded that the asylum's staff leaders had been physically abusing patients. The leaders were dismissed, and the asylum returned to moral management under their replacements. Karori Lunatic Asylum closed in 1873 after its patients moved to Mount View.