Maharashtra: After a gap of over 100 years, Maharashtra gets the nod to build its fifth regional mental health hospital —the first one to be built in the post-Indian independence era with cutting-edge facilities.
The 365-bedded hospital will come up in Kolhapur’s Shirol, nearly 400 kms away from Mumbai.
Gold Rate
05 May 2025
At present, Maharashtra has four regional mental health hospitals in Pune, Thane, Nagpur and Ratnagiri.
The oldest one is the 940-bedded Nagpur regional mental health hospital which was established in 1884.
Nagpur’s mental hospitals was started in 1884 but was then functioning under a pejorative name of ‘lunatic asylum’. The hospital slowly transformed with time as an out-patient’s department was introduced in 1959 and was subsequently renamed Nagpur Regional Mental Hospital. This hospital is now accessed by 50,000 people a year coming from eight districts of Vidarbha.
After 31 years, the latest hospital was constructed in Pune in 1915 with over 2,000 bed capacities—one of the largest mental hospitals in Asia.
Since then, in the last 108 years, the state’s attempts to ramp up mental health institutions failed repeatedly.
