Valkenberg Hospital

Valkenberg Hospital
Western Cape Department of Health
Shown in Cape Town
Geography
Location	Observatory, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
Coordinates	33°56′22″S 18°28′54″E / 33.9394°S 18.4816°E / -33.9394; 18.4816Coordinates: 33°56′22″S 18°28′54″E / 33.9394°S 18.4816°E / -33.9394; 18.4816
Organisation
Care system	Department of Health
Funding	Public hospital
Hospital type	Specialist
Affiliated university	University of Cape Town
Services
Emergency department	Psychiatric Emergency Unit
Beds	370 (170 acute)
Speciality	Psychiatry
History
Founded	1890
Links
Website	http://www.westerncape.gov.za/eng/your_gov/305/facilities/6441/20323
Lists	Hospitals in South Africa

The Valkenberg Hospital is a large, government-funded, tertiary psychiatric hospital in the city of Cape Town, South Africa.

It is situated in the suburb of Observatory between the banks of the Liesbeek and Black Rivers, overlooking Devil's Peak in the distance. Together with its associated psychiatric hospitals (Lentegeur, Stikland and Alexandra Hospitals) it is the chief provider of specialist psychiatric services to the Cape Peninsula as well as being a major specialist referral centre of the Western Cape province.

It is the main teaching hospital for the University of Cape Town's Department of Psychiatry and is also a specialised training centre for psychiatric nursing (Stellenbosch and Western Cape Nursing Colleges).

The present institution dates from 1891. (The name Valkenberg derives from the Dutch farmer Cornelius Valk, who established a farm the land on which the hospital is now situated, in 1720.) In 1881, the Colonial Government of the Cape Colony purchased the Valkenberg estate with a view to building a reformatory. This never took place but a "lunatic asylum", as it was then called, was established instead to accommodate patients transferred from Robben Island. The island had initially accepted patients to relieve pressure from city hospitals such as the Somerset, but reports of unhealthy conditions, overcrowding, and high suicide rates resulted in the decision to transfer care of patients to the Valkenberg site. On 20 February 1891 the first 36 patients were transferred from Robben Island to the Valkenberg Asylum. This originally consisted of two racially segregated hospitals straddling the Liesbeeck and Black rivers. In the first half of the 20th century the hospital became formally associated with the Medical School of the University of Cape Town.

A famous patient was the poet Ingrid Jonker who was admitted with depression in the 1960s; she later recounted her experiences in several poems. Valkenberg Hospital features prominently in the troubled life of Tshepo, the lead character in K. Sello Duiker's novel, The Quiet Violence of Dreams.