The Moisio Hospital Museum

The Moisio Hospital Museum has gone virtual

The Moisio Hospital Museum opened its doors in 1987, the hospital’s 60^th year of operation. Since then, the Museum has provided an intriguing new perspective on the Moisio Hospital (founded 1927), the unique community that developed within it, and the overall history of psychiatric hospital treatment. For the longest time, psychiatric hospitals were closed off, separated from the rest of society. The patients as well as the staff lived within hospital grounds, where outsiders were not welcome.

The Museum’s exhibitions not only touched on patient care and treatments, but also on the nature of life in the hospital community. Exhibition spaces were furnished as patients’ rooms, nurses’ offices, treatment spaces and cafeterias. Many patient-made handicrafts were also on display; creative work was used as therapy, and the sale of items and furniture made at the hospital was a financial boon for the institution.

The Museum was open to the public every summer up to 2019. Former hospital staff worked as guides on a volunteer basis.

Unfortunately, as the Social and Health Care Joint Authority of South Savo is relinquishing the premises of the Moisio Hospital with the construction of a new psychiatric hospital in the summer of 2023, and with no alternative premises being found, the Moisio Hospital Museum closed its doors permanently in July 2021. However, a virtual tour of the Museum is available to all and sundry, around the clock and throughout the year – simply click the link below.

Take a virtual tour of the Moisio Hospital Museum (only in Finnish).