It was initially known as Sunnyside Lunatic Asylum, and its first patients were 17 people who had previously been kept in the Lyttelton gaol.

[3] In 1995, four years before the hospital's closure, nurses walked off the job because of dangerous working conditions.

A football team largely made up of staff from the hospital, was the first Christchurch champions of the Chatham Cup in 1926.

[4] [Mrs R. said it would] be a good idea for me to admit myself as a voluntary boarder to Sunnyside Mental Hospital where there was a new electric treatment, which, in her opinion, would help me.

I woke toothless and was admitted to Sunnyside Hospital and I was given the new electric treatment, and suddenly my life was thrown out of focus.